Ecological Competition for Successful Rehabilitation

Planting in degraded mine spoil can dramatically increase the rate of natural forest succession which would otherwise slow, by ameliorating soil, upgrading microclimate condition, and providing habitat for seed dispersing wildlife that can lead for a progressive enrichment of floristic diversity. The choice of species in re-vegetating mined areas is challenging in tropical forest. It has been universally accepted that grasses and legumes should form the essential and obvious choice in all the sites. Shrub planting will have special consideration for all planting areas. The need is quick coverage of affected area with tough and high resistance species. It has been accepted that establishment and maintenance of vegetation is an integral part of restoration of mined sites. Monitoring of the vegetation has not received priority and is generally considered far less exciting. In fact monitoring of restored areas is important to ascertain the impact on ecosystem components. Restored mine spoil thus requires biological monitoring to estimate the pace of development. It has also been suggested that continued monitoring of rehabilitated site may show a faster return to the pre disturbance site. Various changes taking place during ecosystem development and assessment about different indices of growth and vigor. Biological monitoring of the site can be done by collecting information about community structure and composition. Community as a social unit and as a natural aggregation of plants, which is the product of definite conditions, present, and past and it can exist when these conditions are fulfilled. Presence of particular community has existed at a site affects its species richness. Newly developed community may contain only a few species and the number increased as more species invade and established. This may take several years for a full community to develop in a new pool. The importance of the age of a single or new community is different from that of the age of the general community type. The diversity in the general community type often depends on the co-evolution of the organisms, while the diversity of a particular community is primarily due to the immigration of and colonization by existing species. An analysis of life forms and composition in reclaimed mine lands indicated that number of species and species diversity index tended to increase for the first nine years after restoration and it was also found that vegetation recovery rate was higher on the reclaimed sites than on un-reclaimed sites. Competition between species in a community may alter species richness. The harshness of the environment in some mining habitats, erosion, deforestation areas alter the relative competitive ability of the species, giving species which are well adopted to such environments the chance to survive there. In some situations for harshness of environment, may prevent invasion by one vigorous species, which could increase the diversity. For individual communities there are many factors which can the number of species presents. Some of the influences on a community are external ones, the biotic effect of the habitat. Other influences will come from within the community; the individual present will themselves affect species the diversity. One theory says that longer the community type has existed; the more species will have had the opportunity to join the community. The overall structure of the community will be determined by a combination of several features such as physical environment, community size and longevity of the species present. The community may be stable or unstable with high or low primary productivity and may change seasonally.