Reclamation - restoring disturbed lands

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A place to discuss and learn about the restoration of disturbed lands to desirable end land uses

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Track_Shovel

Amendments and substrates to develop anthroposols for northern mine reclamation (acrobat.adobe.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Track_Shovel to c/reclamation

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What do you do when you don't have soil? Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence in mining; particularly on older sites.

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[–] Track_Shovel 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When I did my masters, biochar was just starting out with regards to becoming popular. I used it in my trial, and found it had good N retention properties due to its charge. In the bioassay, peat + soil was better than biochar + soil, but it was close, which was interesting, given how inert biochar generally is.

I have seen studies where they co-apply it with manure, but haven't read the results because I've gotten sucked into other topics.

Your trials are cool.

The crushed gravel + amendments makes sense, though, since you are creating a well drained soil with reasonable amounts of nutrients.

[+] Treevan@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] Track_Shovel 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do you mean by 'unadulterated'?

I'm suspecting the answer to this question is 'yes'. We purchased it from a small company (now bankrupt). They cooked it at 380C. We targeted lower temperatures, as this had several properties we were interested in.

circum-neutral pH; higher cook temperatures boost pH, to as high as 10. soil pHs in my area are around 7-8, so we didn't need a liming effect.
The lower temperature resulted in less crystaline structure, which is easier to break down, and provides more functional groups which may possibly act as nutrient soruces. At higher temps, these are cooked off, and not available to microbes.