Minimising Coal Mining’s Impact on Biodiversity: Artificial Soils for Post-Mining Land Reclamation

Angelika Więckol-Ryk (), Łukasz Pierzchała, Arkadiusz Bauerek and Alicja Krzemień ()
Additional contact information
Angelika Więckol-Ryk: Department of Extraction Technologies, Rockburst and Risk Assessment, Central Mining Institute, 40-166 Katowice, Poland
Łukasz Pierzchała: Department of Water Protection, Central Mining Institute, 40-166 Katowice, Poland
Arkadiusz Bauerek: Department of Environment Monitoring, Plac Gwarków 1, 40-166 Katowice, Poland
Alicja Krzemień: Department of Extraction Technologies, Rockburst and Risk Assessment, Central Mining Institute, 40-166 Katowice, Poland

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-16

Abstract: Coal mining and the energy industry generate large amounts of solid waste, which must be disposed of in landfills and lead to numerous environmental problems. This paper presents a method for creating artificial soil mixtures based on an EU-funded international research project called RECOVERY. The main idea behind the proposed solution is the safe use of coal combustion by-products (energetic slag and decarbonation lime), mining waste (aggregate and sealing material) and spent mushroom compost as components for creating artificial soils. Laboratory tests of the soil substitutes showed low concentrations of heavy metals and high macronutrient content, adequate for proper plant growth. As a result of a two-year study on the application of soil cover on a 4000 m 2 testing ground, species characteristics for the mesotrophic, dry meadow, ruderal and segregated vegetation were found. In the second year of the in situ study, an apparent reduction in soil salinity was observed. The principal component analysis confirmed that decreasing soil salinity positively affected ruderal and dry meadow species. In contrast, high salinity levels showed no adverse effect on mesotrophic meadow vegetation. The results demonstrated that applying soil covers elaborated from industrial by-products is valuable for recovering high-acidity coal mine waste heaps.

Keywords: artificial soils; waste heap; land rehabilitation; biodiversity increase; circular economy approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9707/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9707/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:12:p:9707-:d:1173279

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().