2012-06-20_PERMIT FILE - C2010089 (62)

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Summary The long -term relationships established among plant communities, total soil depth and soil characteristics on reclaimed lands were very different from the relationships observed during initial vegetation establishment. Through time, the plant community and soil quality may have changed to achieve balance. This relationship among vegetation, soil depth and soil quality in 2003 provides evidence that pre- determined soil depths established in previous stusiies (Power et al., 1981; Merrill et al., 1998) were needed more for initial establishment than for long -germ evelopment of the plant community. The sex used to reclaim a disturbed area seems to be as important as soil depth thi6iigh time. The use of smooth brome and crested wheatgrass in vegetation strips may have masked some important results that could have been identified if a more native seed mix was used. Recently established soil wedges (Schladweiler et al., 2002) will be of more value for long -term studies because of the native seed mixes used. More work can be conducted on the ZSW and the SSW in the future. Both of these wedges are marked and documented for future research and soil samples are currently undergoing further analyses. There are also wedge sites located in Montana (Barth and Martin, 1984), Colorado (Redente and Hargis, 1985), New Mexico (contact Bruce Buchanan) and Wyoming (Pinchak et al., 1985; Bowen, 2003) that offer unique opportunities to learn more about localized long -term relationships between plant community development, soil depth and soil properties. Acknowledgements We thank Basin Electric Cooperative, BKS Environmental Associates, INC. and North Dakota State University for providing funding and manpower necessary to complete vegetation and soil sampling. We also thank Gerald Bieber for proving access to the ZSW and making cattle grazing arrangements for this study. Literature Cited Barth, R.C., and B.K. Martin. 1984. Soil Depth Requirements for Re- vegetation of Surface - mined Areas in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. Journal of Environmental Quality 13:399 -404. Bowen, C. K. 2003. Influence of Topsoil Depth on Plant Community and Soil Attributes of Reclaimed Mine Land After 24 Years. MS Thesis. UW, Laramie, Wyoming. Chambers, J.C., and R.W. Brown. 1983. Methods for Vegetation Sampling and Analysison Re- vegetated Mined Lands. US Forest Service, Intermountain Forest andRange Experimentation Station, Ogden, Utah. General Technical Report INT -151. Day, P.R. 1965. Particle Fractionation and Particle Size Analysis. In C. A. Black (ed.)Methods of Soil Analysis, Part I, Physical and Mineralogical Properties, Including Statistics of Measurement and Sampling. ASA, Madison, Wisconsin. Doll, E.C., S.D. Merrill, and G.A. Halverson. 1984. Soil Replacement for Reclamationof Strip Mined Lands in North Dakota. North Dakota Agricultural ExperimentStation Bulletin 514. JMP 4.0.4. 2001. Division of SAS, SAS Institute. 1242