Reclamation

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Limestone quarry with recultivated mining area in the foreground

Under reclamation technically and materially expensive measures to restore or returning a be landscape understood in a usable state, which affect the people through massive intervention as a result of economic activity or destroyed. The newly created or restored cultural landscapes are planned and mostly serve subsequent uses, for example for agriculture and forestry , but also as a local recreation area .

A distinction must be made between recultivation and renaturation . A recultivation measure basically has an economic use as its goal, whereas in a renaturation the aim is to create near-natural habitats.

Recultivation goals

The aim of recultivation is to restore the original cultural landscape or to create a new one. As a rule, one cultural landscape is replaced by another. Quarries , gravel pits , landfills of all kinds and post-mining landscapes in general, especially open-cast mining areas, are recultivated . The consequences of natural hazards can also change the function of the landscape ecosystems and the appearance of the cultivated landscape and thus require the implementation of recultivation measures.

The top priority of recultivation is to restore the efficiency of the landscape budget so that the affected area can be reused as planned. Recultivation is also increasingly being viewed as the preferred area for renaturation . For example, leaving a gravel pit open creates a desirable, small-scale variety of habitats from the point of view of nature conservation and is also usually the most cost-effective solution for the pit operator who is obliged to recultivate.

Special feature of the post-mining landscape

Planned post-mining landscape of the Garzweiler opencast mine in 2100, detailed planning with regard to precise mining limits and recultivation are still pending

In Germany, the recultivation of areas following mining areas in particular is a major challenge. Ecologists and planners have developed a large number of concepts, especially since the beginning of the 21st century, which are characterized by different objectives and measures. Thereby, proponents of classic subsequent uses (bathing lake, agriculture and forestry) and proponents of spontaneously settling flora and fauna on former mining areas face each other. The latter call for a promotion of renaturation instead of general recultivation (“forest instead of forest”) as compensation and replacement for the destruction of pre-mining landscapes.

The question arises, not only in renaturation ecology , whether, in view of the difficult geological conditions in the soil, economic usability can be restored at all. For example, environmental researchers point out that there is a wide gap between theory and practice because remedial measures are complicated, lengthy and expensive. Among other things, it had to be determined that various renovation measures did not work because the soil was damaged too long. Rather, the question of the stability and sustainability of ecosystem development is still unresolved in the emerging post-mining landscape. At the same time, ecologists and planners assume that the solution of the environmental problems will take decades or even centuries and that in connection with opencast mines in particular , one should not speak of contaminated sites but of perpetual burdens .

Although renaturation ecology is a young scientific discipline, there is increasing recognition that recultivation will not be able to replace the loss of old forest ecosystems in the foreseeable future and that new land seldom offer the agricultural and ecological potential of its predecessors. However, areas that have been destroyed by renaturation cannot be completely restored to the state before the damage. Among other things, the biodiversity on the renatured areas remains lower than before the disturbance, and the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle also show lower values ​​after the renaturation than the original ecosystems . The restoration of areas that have been damaged by human use is therefore no substitute for preventive protection of ecosystems.

See also

literature

  • Wolfram Pflug (Hrsg.): Brown coal mining and recultivation. Landscape ecology - reuse - nature conservation . Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-540-60092-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rekultivierung Spektrum.de , accessed on April 1, 2019
  2. ↑ Renaturation Ecology (pp. 11–12.) BTU Cottbus , accessed on April 1, 2019
  3. ↑ Rekultivierung Spektrum.de , accessed on April 1, 2019
  4. ↑ Wolfram Pflug: Lignite mining and recultivation. Springer-Verlag, 2013, p. 177.
  5. ↑ Reinhard Barbl: Recultivation versus Renaturation. The spontaneous development of vegetation in the area of ​​tension between nature conservation and planned subsequent use. BHM - Berg- und Hüttenmännische monthly books (148/10), 2003, pp. 412–417.
  6. ↑ Wilderness potential in the Lusatian post-mining landscape Deutsche Umwelthilfe , accessed on March 26, 2019
  7. ↑ Thorough Destruction of the Climate Reporter from October 22, 2015, accessed on March 26, 2019
  8. ↑ Meike Kirscht: Recultivation of opencast mining areas with various soil additives and tree species. Dissertation, 2001, p. 1 f. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, accessed on March 26, 2019
  9. ↑ David Moreno-Mateos et al .: Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt . In: Nature Communications . tape 8 , 2017, doi : 10.1038 / ncomms14163 .
  10. ^ Art landscapes instead of nature BUND, accessed on March 27, 2019
  11. ↑ Meike Kirscht: Recultivation of opencast mining areas with various soil additives and tree species. Dissertation, 2001, p. 1 f. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, accessed on March 26, 2019