Reclamation - restoring disturbed lands

When Angela Chalk first heard there were ways that ordinary people could offset flooding in New Orleans, she was skeptical.

Her neighbors in the Seventh Ward knew all about heavy rains that brought knee-high floodwaters, spilling into porches and marooning cars and homes, and were frustrated that it was something they felt powerless to stop.

Then she heard Jeff Supak, head of a nonprofit organization now called Water Wise Gulf South, talk about how simple fixes like rain gardens and vegetated ditches, also known as bioswales, could soak up extra rain.

A bioswale was installed alongside Ms. Chalk’s driveway, native species were planted, and clay in her backyard was replaced with absorbent soil.

During the next heavy downpour, Ms. Chalk looked outside. Storm water that previously had nowhere to go was seeping into the ground. She took photos and shared them with friends.

“What I saw at her home was a project that I had never witnessed before,” recalled one of the friends, Cheryl Austin, who works with a community organization, the Greater Treme Consortium. “I was so impressed.”

https://archive.ph/rkuYZ

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20534437

Thorn forest once blanketed the Rio Grande Valley. Restoring even a little of it could help the region cope with the impacts of climate change

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20554167

archived (Wayback Machine)

...one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

Compost your fruit scraps! (Or just throw them on the neighbour's pasture land.)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20537638

In a drought-hit Mexican border region at the center of growing competition with the United States for water, conservationists are working to bring a once-dying river delta back to life.

cross-posted from: https://peculiar.florist/notes/9mvjejg1u8q1tqnr

What was once pasture is now a forest.

www.boredpanda.com/brazilian-couple-recreated-forest-sebastiao-leila-salgado-reforestation/
institutoterra.org/o-instituto/

Instituto Terra is a non-profit civil organization founded in April 1998. It is focused on the environmental restoration and sustainable rural development of the Doce River Valley. The region was originally covered by the Atlantic Forest and covers municipalities of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo bathed by the Doce River Basin.

The Rio Doce Basin is one of the most important in the Brazilian Southeast. In its domain live more than four million people, who face the consequences of deforestation and the disordered use of natural resources, such as soil erosion and water scarcity.

The Terra Institute is the result of the initiative of the couple Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado, who faced the scenario of environmental degradation in which the old cattle farm acquired from the family of Sebastião Salgado – like the many other rural units located in the mining city of Aimorés – made a decision: to return to nature that decades of environmental degradation destroyed.

The first step was to transform the area into a Private Reserve of Natural Heritage – RPPN Fazenda Bulcão. The title was obtained in an unprecedented way in October 1998, being the first environmental recognition granted in Brazil to a completely degraded property, given the commitment to be reforested.

The first planting was carried out in November 1999 and was attended by students from schools in the municipality of Aimorés, in Minas Gerais. Thus was born the largest proposal of the Earth Institute: to share with the community of its surroundings all the knowledge acquired in the environmental restoration of the 608.69 hectares of the RPPN Fazenda Bulcão.

To achieve this goal develops projects ranging from forest restoration and nascent protection to applied scientific research and environmental education. The financial support comes from different partners, both from the governmental and private enterprise, as well as from Foundations and individual donors from various countries and other institutions of the Third Sector.

Due to the action of the Earth Institute, thousands of hectares of degraded areas of the Atlantic Forest in the middle Doce River and close to 2,000 springs are in the process of recovery. The former cattle ranch, once completely degraded, today houses a forest with diversity of species of the flora of Atlantic Forest.

The experience proves that with the recovery of green, springs flow again and species of the Brazilian fauna, at risk of extinction, return to have a safe refuge.

avant : institutoterra.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/antes-1.jpg

après : institutoterra.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Instituto-Terra-2022-%C2%A9Sebastiao-Salgado-221213-00-00393-scaled.jpg

#ecologie #Bresil #InstitutoTerra

@environnement

the city has created seven “biodiversity parks” on previously degraded land, reports contributor Nidhi Jamwal for Mongabay India.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), along with the University of Delhi, began restoring the mined area in 2004. Today, three previously abandoned deep mining pits serve as conservatories for butterflies, ferns and orchids.

Cleaning up contaminated land is a struggle. Meet some of the community leaders who are taking matters into their own hands.

• Youtube link
• Wikipedia page
• Miyawaki forests are a global sensation, but not everyone’s sold on them

Abstract Reclamation of disturbances from oil sands mining requires effective soil management to ensure successful plant establishment and to promote recovery of native plant communities.

In this study we investigated the effects of salvage depths (shallow vs. deep) and placement depths (shallow vs. deep) of forest topsoil on plant establishment, species richness, and soil properties in two substrate types (sand and peat-mineral). Shallow salvage led to greater tree stem densities and higher canopy cover for most plant groups, although there was no significant difference in species richness between shallow and deep salvages. Deep place- ment generally resulted in greater canopy cover, while its effect on plant density was very small for most plant groups. On peat-mineral substrate, fewer differences were detected between shallow and deep salvage, and multiple treatments resulted in greater cover.

Find- ings suggest that a balance between maximizing the area over which propagules are redis- tributed and providing sufficient resources for successful plant establishment is necessary. Forest topsoil from shallow salvages and deep placements is recommended when targeting increased site productivity and species diversity. In contrast, deep salvage should be used when the primary objective is to obtain maximum reclamation material volume.

Salvage depth effects may be influenced by substrate type, with peat-mineral substrate providing more favourable conditions for plant establishment. Further research is needed to assess the long-term impacts of different salvage and placement depths on plant community devel- opment and the potential effects of substrate properties on soil and plant response.

Pretty good restoration, given that closure construction just finished last year. They still have a ways to go before they can walk away, but the main things (pit filling, capping of dumps) have been completed, and there's no more yellow iron rumbling across the site to close things up.

This law aims to put measures in place to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030, and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.

It sets specific, legally binding targets and obligations for nature restoration in each of the listed ecosystems – from terrestrial to marine, freshwater and urban ecosystems.

ABSTRACT
The development of habitat restoration techniques for restoring critical woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) winter habitat will play an important role in meeting the management thresholds in woodland caribou recovery plans. The goal is to restore disturbed environments within critical winter habitat for the declining woodland caribou. Woodland caribou are diet specialists, utilizing lichen-rich habitat for forage during winter months. Cladonia sub-genus Cladina is the most frequently eaten species during this time. Herein, we provide: 1) A review of previously used methods for transplanting Cladonia sub-genus Cladina and their feasibility in restoring woodland caribou winter habitat; 2) A stepby- step protocol on how to carry out a terrestrial lichen transplant program (using Cladonia sub-genus Cladina and C. uncialis); and, 3) An evaluation of our protocol through the establishment of a case study in northern British Columbia. Our results indicate that transplanting C. sub-genus Cladina fragments is the most efficient technique for transplanting terrestrial lichen communities, but transplanting lichen ‘patches’ or ‘mats’ may also be effective.

Cool article about seed banks. We really need to start creating and using them

American Rivers has some new (as of a month ago) videos of the Copco 1 and J.C. Boyle dams being breached. I'm really excited to see how the Klamath river responds to these dams being removed.

Copco 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEAuGu6zp-0&t=106s

J.C. Boyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDD8lYV_GRQ

Also, someone made a post-breach video of the river with their drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIJcOaSBsOg

(Sorry for not including alternate Piped links. That site isn't working for me right now for some reason.)

A good example of rough mounding benefits.

A 20-year experiment conducted by Colorado State University researchers in Yellowstone National Park found that restoring apex predators like wolves was not a quick fix for ecosystems degraded by their absence. While wolf reintroduction lowered elk populations, willows and aspens did not recover as strongly as expected even after carnivore numbers rebounded naturally. Constructing fences and dams showed the importance of reducing browsing and increasing water access independently. The study challenges the idea that easily reversing food webs can undo lasting ecological changes.

Good article that shows how mine dumps can be reclaimed to support human use (drive in) and how re-mining of wastes can be feasible in some cases