So yesterday I was doing some volunteer work for the national forest place near by.
Anyways, basically we went out to a site that was being rehabilitated if you would by planting a bunch of trees.
They showed us some pictures from back when it was being used to mine coal in the early 1900's no trees in the area, just a flat land with nothing really growing.(Pretty sure it was a forest before that, they come in harvest all the trees, and then start digging up all the coal.)
Anyways, the way they pile the dirt, and destroy the surrounding forest leads to the destruction of the water flow, streams etc. Basically the water instead of traveling down the hill sides etc, would instead sink into the mine shaft, cause sink holes to collapse etc.
This basically caused the streams to stop flowing, as the water was being trapped in the mine shafts instead of working its way down the mountain etc. and creating sink holes and everything else.
The idea from what I can tell was they planted like 2,000 trees. I guess they are hoping the trees would absorb the water before it sunk down in to the mine shafts or built up and got to heavy causing sink holes.
Anyways apparently this problem is going all over the place in this area. And probably a lot of other areas too, even when you look at the hill sides etc they look completely un natural.
Its kinda crazy to see the aftermath, and also helping to restore it, but not really knowing if in the future what you are doing will cause more issues.
I am pretty sure the tree's they were planting were not a natural tree found in that area? Basically they were on their 2nd or 3rd grow season, and we just went around re-staking the ones that fell over, and cleaning up the crap out there from the ones that disappeared. (They put a plastic housing around the tree's as they start to grow to keep deer from rubbing against them etc. and then zip tied that to a stake that helps hold it up.)
Was cool though to be standing there looking at pictures of how the place looked 100+ years ago, and its not even recognizable at all...=D I can only imagine once all those trees grow up.
updated by @rude-bwoy: 01/13/15 10:03:01PM
