Another main goal for reclamation is to restore the landscape so that it ties into the surrounding, undisturbed landscape and to bring back the ecosystems that were obliterated during human activity. To do this, reclamation practitioners must consider the species they will use during revegetation. While some species may occur in undisturbed locations, and we may want them to come back, planting or seeding them may not be feasible. In most cases, a lot of the native vegetation we want is not available commercially, so we're forced to make due with which native species ARE available or locally collect these seeds ourselves, which is very time consuming.
The general steps for species selection are:
- determine which species are common to each site series and those that existed on the landscape
- review guidance documents (government?) and consider dominant overstory and understorey species for area we intend to reclaim
- determine which species are commercially available, or easily harvested - these will become the foundation of our revegetation prescription
- Plant the species. In some cases, we may want to intensively plant in some locations, creating vegetation islands. If there are existing areas of natural vegetation, we also want to try and protect these from degrading as they are an important source of seeds.
- monitor the recovery of our planted species; adapt our strategy if things aren't going well
- test the efficacy of our new list at another location. If we got it right the first time, keep revegetating
- continue to adapt our strategy as we learn new things.
I mean, usually the whole business model is set up to enable walking away!