Surface coal mining in Appalachia has caused extensive replacement of forest with non-forested land cover, much of which is unmanaged and unproductive. Although forested ecosystems are valued by society for both marketable products and ecosystem services, forests have not been restored on most Appalachian mined lands because traditional reclamation practices, encouraged by regulatory policies, created conditions poorly suited for reforestation. Reclamation scientists have studied productive forests growing on older mine sites, established forest vegetation experimentally on recent mines, and identified mine reclamation practices that encourage forest vegetation re-establishment. Based on these findings, they developed a Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) that can be employed by coal mining firms to restore forest vegetation. Scientists and mine regulators, working collaboratively, have communicated the FRA to the coal industry and to regulatory enforcement personnel. Today, the FRA is used routinely by many coal mining firms, and thousands of mined hectares have been reclaimed to restore productive mine soils and planted with native forest trees. Reclamation of coal mines using the FRA is expected to restore these lands' capabilities to provide forest-based ecosystem services, such as wood production, atmospheric carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, watershed protection, and water quality protection to a greater extent than conventional reclamation practices.

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Both climate and plant species are hypothesized to influence soil organic carbon (SOC) quality, but accurate prediction of how SOC process rates respond to global change will require an improved understanding of how SOC quality varies with mean annual temperature (MAT) and forest type. We investigated SOC quality in paired hardwood and pine stands growing in coarse textured soils located along a 22 DC gradient in MAT. To do this, we conducted SO-day incubation experiments at 10 and 30 DC to quantify SOC decomposition rates, which we used to kinetically define SOC quality. We used these experiments to test the hypotheses that SOC quality decreases with MAT, and that SOC quality is higher under pine than hardwood tree species. We found that both SOC quantity and quality decreased with increasing MAT. During the 30 DC incubation, temperature sensitivity (QI0) values were strongly and positively related to SOC decomposition rates, indicating that substrate supply can influence temperature responsiveness of SOC decomposition rates. For a limited number of dates, QI0 was negatively related to MAT. Soil chemical properties could not explain observed patterns in soil quality. Soil pH and cation exchange capacity (CEC) both declined with increasing MAT, and soil C quality was positively related to pH but negatively related to CEC. Clay mineralogy of soils also could not explain patterns of SOC quality as complex (2: 1), high CEC clay minerals occurred in cold climate soils while warm climate soils were dominated by simpler (1: 1), low CEC clay minerals. While hardwood sites contained more SOC than pine sites, with differences declining with MAT, clay content was also higher in hardwood soils. In contrast, there was no difference in SOC quality between pine and hardwood soils. Overall, these findings indicate that SOC quantity and quality may both decrease in response to global warming, despite long-term changes in soil chemistry and mineralogy that favor decomposition.

m Surface mining poses a significant threat to the Appalachian region via forest loss and fragmentation. Reclamation methods that utilize heavy grading to prevent landslides and erosion create a compacted landscape that is not suitable for forest establishment or growth. Overburden materials derived from differing geologic strata can exhibit large variation in physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties. Determining whicb strata should be used for creating a rooting medium for successful reforestation is not well established. Twelve 0.2-ha plots composed of either segregated brown sandstone, gray sandstone, sbale, or a sandstone-shale mixture (four treatments; n = 3) were created on a surface mine in eastern Kentucky using a low-compaction reclamation method. Each plot was planted with native hardwood tree seedlings following the Forestry Reclamation Approach. After two growing seasons, brown sandstone treatments had four times greater extractable P (Mehlich III) and five times greater total N than the other treatments. This helped contribute to greater tree growth on brown sandstone treatments. Spoil settling was faster in the shale treatments due to the loss of carbonate cements. Clay contents and 2:1 minerals were also greater in the whole soil of the shale treatments, leading to greater plant-available water and a greater cation exchange capacity. Gray sandstone treatments exhibited alkaline conditions (pH :: 8.8) that suppressed tree growth. The mixing of brown sandstone and shale overburdens may produce a suitable combination of higher fertility, water holding capacity, and faster settling in reclaimed mine environments.Abbreviations: CEC, cation exchange capacity; FRA, Forestry Reclamation Approach.T he Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) requires the restoration of post-mining land use capability to a level "equal to or better than" that which preceded mining. Surface-mined lands in Appalachia were forested before mining but are often reclaimed to pasture. One reason for this change in land use is that the reclamation practices under SMCRA tend to inhibit tree growth. Impediments to forest growth under SMCRA includes: (i) excessive compaction of the spoil, (ii) unsuitable or sometimes toxic rooting material, and (iii) competition for nutrients and water by aggressive and often invasive herbaceous species that are planted to establish ground cover (Angel et al., 2005;Burger et al., 2005a;Rodrigue and Burger, 2004). The spoil medium effects on tree growth, tree species not suited to site conditions, and improper tree planting techniques are often problems associated with reclaimed lands. Realizing the significance of these problems, regulatory, mining, and research groups coordinated efforts to restore forests across the region. As a result, a five-step system to reforest coal-mined land, called the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA), was developed based on 80 yr of research. The steps of FRA are: (i) create a suitable 1.2-m-deep rooting medium for Soil Sei. Soc.

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