Nutritive Levels in Plants from Stripmined Areas in Eastern Ohio

Data on nutritive quality of vegetation for stripmined lands were obtained in 1972-73 from 2 Ohio counties, one having generally acidic spoil banks and the other having calcareous spoils. Proximate analysis of water, ash, crude protein, ether extract, cell-wall constituents, and nitrogen-free extract revealed few significant differences between plants growing on stripped and undisturbed (control) plots. Plants also were analyzed for 6 essential elements by emission spectrography. Levels of potassium were significantly higher in plants from control plots. Calcium levels were higher in plants from alkaline spoils, and manganese levels were higher in plants from acidic mined plots. Manganese levels exceeded 600 ppm in some plant samples from acidic spoil banks. Even when plants from stripped plots contained significantly less of a given element, levels were generally not low enough to indicate nutrient deficiency. OHIO J. SCI. 78(2): 70, 1978 Stripmining is a major environmental problem in Ohio, as in other coal producing states, because over large mined areas the original plant communities were destroyed. Some areas are so inhospitable to plant growth that attempts to restore vegetative cover by a variety of planting techniques and plant species have been unsuccessful. In a random-sampling survey of surface-mined areas, the U. S. Department of the Interior (1967) estimated that only 25% of the sites observed were suitable for agriculture. The usefulness of these mined lands in the future can be questioned. It has been suggested that they might be utilized for wildlife and wildlifeassociated recreation. Depending on substrate type, vegetation on mined lands may be less abundant and diverse and characterized by a plant community differing in composition from that of nearby undisturbed land. Nutritive levels in plant tissues from mined sites may differ from those of undisturbed lands. Our ^lanuscript received August 26, 1977 and in revised form December 16, 1977 (#77-65). Present address: U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Suite 900, 1860 Lincoln Street, Denver, CO 80295. Present address: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545. principal objective was to examine the effects of substrate, as altered by stripmining, on the nutritive quality of vegetation growing on such substrate and available as food for wildlife that inhabit these mined sites. DESCRIPTION OF STUDY AREAS Vegetation samples were obtained from study areas in Harrison and Perry Counties in east-central Ohio. These sites possess distinctively different types of overburden (Lindsay 1974). The important difference between the two study areas, for purposes of this investigation, was the contrasting pH levels of spoil banks. The unglaciated Perry area has a mature topography with average relief of 61 m. Mean annual temperature is 10.8°C and mean annual precipitation is 91.8 cm. Total snowfall from December 1972 through March 1973 was 17.5 cm (U. S. Department of Commerce 1972, 1973). It is unusual for snowfall to persist for more than 1 week. The principal coal seam, No. 6 Middle Kittaning, occurred in two or three benches separated by highly acid, pyritic shales and clays (Limstrom and Merz 1951). The pH of stripped plots was 3.7 to 4.0, that of control plots 4.1 to 4.3. Mining of the