Summary
Soil stockpiles will be instrumental in the reclamation of mine sites and well pads in the future. Some mine sites are planning on reclaiming at least half of their leases using soil stockpiles. Therefore, we need to know the reclamation potential of these stockpiles. To evaluate the future potential of stockpiles we sampled both the above ground vegetation and the seed bank across 8 different stockpiles. The seed bank samples were germinated in the greenhouse for 4 months and identified and tallied to the species level. Ordinations, permANOVA's and MANOVA's were used to see where the majority of the seed bank occurs, if stockpile communities start to resemble natural forest communities over time, and if the above ground community is a good indicator of the seed bank community. Most seeds that germinated came from the 0-5 cm depth in stockpiles, and LFH in natural forest sites. Older stockpile communities were not more similar to natural forest communities due to a lack of shrub and tree cover and the above ground community was only a good indicator of the seed bank for forb and grass species. Stockpiles and natural forest sites do not appear to have many seeds below the surface, which means salvaging soil from below a few centimeters will dilute the seed bank. Due to a lack of trees and shrubs in stockpile seed banks, planting of these species should be considered once stockpiles are used on reclamation sites, but not before.
DISCLAIMER: This is a class exercise based on modified data sets.