ABSTRACT
Ecological restoration concentrates on processes such as persistence of species through natural recruitment and survival, functioning food webs, system-wide nutrient conservation via relationships among plants, animals and the detrivore community (Jackson et al. 1995). However, the process of natural succession on mine spoils is slow due to the removal of top soil resulting in elimination of soil seed bank and root stocks, and due to soil profile disturbances (Parrotta 1992, Bradshaw 1997a). Ecological restoration of such habitats requires the establishment of a self-sustaining of soil/plant system in which nutrient release rates are adequate for plant growth. Although the immediate goal of
1 INTRODUCTION
Significant alterations in the terrestrial biosphere have occurred due to rapid expansion of human population, economic development and associated processes such as deforestation, environmental pollution and contamination (Singh et al. 1995, Bradshaw 1997a, Parrotta et al. 2001, Ren et al. 2007). Expansion of industrialization needs massive energy generation for which huge quantity of coal is extracted through mining, causing extensive landscape destruction. In India, total annual coal production estimated during 1994-95 was 325 million tones and this was expected to increase to 417 million tones by 1999-2000, of which the contribution of opencast mining would be about 252 million tones (Banerjee 1990). Opencast coal mining removes surface earth, piling it over unmined land and forming chains of external dumps, i.e., mine spoil or overburden. Mine spoils possess very rigorous conditions for both plant and microbial growth because of low organic matter contents,
rehabilitation programs is to establish a vegetation cover that will prevent soil erosion and loss of nutrient runoff, but long-term goal should always be soil ecosystem development (Singh et al. 1995, 1996, Kabrna, 2011).
