Mining activities ravaged two forests thousands of miles apart. Efforts are afoot to restore them. WhatCanBeSaved
MADRE DE DIOS, Peru — Destruction of the forests can be swift. Regrowth is much, much slower.In a corner of the Peruvian Amazon, where illegal gold mining has scarred forests and poisoned ground, scientists work to change wasteland back to wilderness. More than 3,000 miles to the north, on former coal mining land across Appalachia, workers rip out old trees that never put down deep roots and make the soil more suitable to regrow native tree species.
And yet, there is urgency to that work — forests are one of the planet’s first lines of defense against climate change, absorbing as much as a quarter of man-made carbon emissions each year. After three hours of difficult travel, he reached a broad clearing where knee-high saplings stood in rows, their yellow-green leaves straining for the sun. Farfan whipped out a clipboard with a diagram of the saplings planted months earlier, much like a teacher checking attendance.Within the thick jungle, only a sliver of light escapes to the forest floor.
After cutting and burning centuries-old trees, miners used diesel pumps to suck up deep layers of the earth, then pushed the soil through filters to separate out gold particles. To turn gold dust into nuggets, they stirred in mercury, which binds the gold together but also poisons the land. A study of former gold mines in Peru by scientists at CINCIA and Wake Forest University several years ago found that seedlings transplanted with soil were more likely to survive than “bare-root seedlings,” and the use of special fertilizers also helped growth. Some of the trees tested had absorbed trace amounts of mercury through contaminated soil, but it’s not clear yet how this will affect them.
Companies planted “desperation species” — grasses with shallow roots or non-native trees that could endure, but wouldn’t reach their full height or restore the forest as it had been. On Cheat Mountain and at other former mining sites across Appalachia, more than a million acres of former forests are in similar arrested development.
This “deep ripping,” as it’s known, gives rainwater and tree roots a better chance to push down into the soil. A 2008 study found that disrupting the soil on U.S. brownfield sites through this method helped tree growth. After five growing seasons, trees planted on “ripped” sites had more roots compared to those where deep ripping didn’t occur. Trees also grew taller.“When we first started, a lot of our colleagues thought we were crazy.
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