Date of Award

2019

Publisher

North Dakota State University

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Awarded

Master of Science (MS)

Program

Range Science

Department

School of Natural Resource Sciences

College

Agriculture, Food Systems and Natural Resources

Faculty Advisor

Limb, Ryan F.

Description

Surface coal mining is a large-scale disturbance that disrupts soil properties that requires reclamation. Reclamation monitoring and success typically focuses on vegetation communities, but soil monitoring may improve our understanding of barriers to reclamation success. In this study, we assessed biological presence in stockpiled soils using seed viability screening and phospholipid fatty acid analysis. We found microbial communities had distinct shifts in structure, declines in overall abundance of organisms with increased stockpile depth, and that total seedling emergence was lower in stockpiled soils than the reference site. In addition, we measured carbon pools, vegetative cover, and other edaphic properties in a chronosequence of reclaimed mine land (chapter two) in order to quantify how reclamation affects soil properties. We found disturbance affected all soil properties at every treatment (years since reclamation) and that all soil carbon pools measured were significantly (p <0.005) lower than that of the reference site.

Rights

NDSU policy 190.6.2

Rights Link

https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf

Handle Identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/10365/29272

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