Grass-Legume Seeding: A Sustainable Approach Towards Reclamation of Coalmine Degraded Lands in India

Abstract

Most of the ecosystem services undergo significant degradation during coal mining activities with negative impacts on ecology, biodiversity and local people’s livelihoods. The cumulative effect of such large scale environmental changes is reflected in rising pollution load, earth’s temperatures and deforestation. There is no eloquence to it that coal is and will continue to be the primary fossil fuel in global energy production, there is a need to embrace sustainability as a key aspect throughout all phases of mining. The cheapest, easiest and eco-friendly approach to accelerate the trajectory of ecological restoration towards a reference state is the introduction of versatile and pioneering plant life forms like grasses and legumes. These species works on basic scientific principles based on ecological theories and incorporating them in post-mined landscapes provides multitudinous environmental benefits coupled with economic and social development. Keeping this in mind the chapter aims to emphasize the importance of grass-legume seeding during ecological restoration of mine degraded lands concerned with the concepts of sustainability.

Nitrogen recovery in reclaimed mine soil under different amendment practices in tandem with legume and non‐legume revegetation: A review

“…This can delay the development of the soil horizons and the accumulation of N through succession (Ahirwal & Maiti, 2018). An alternative reclamation approach, through spontaneous/artificial revegetation, accelerates the recovery process (Frouz et al, 2013; Jia et al, 2012; Mukhopadhyay et al, 2016; Sebelikova et al, 2016) and affects the N cycling in mine soils (Ahirwal et al, 2017; Kumari & Maiti, 2019, 2021). Revegetation requires selecting species according to their ability to grow in complex mine soil, and extreme climatic conditions provide uniform rather than clumpy vegetation cover at the initial stage and avoid erosion/runoff (Kumari et al, 2022; Maiti, 2013; Maiti & Saxena, 1998; Ramani, 2012).…”