Study on Soil Spread at Rehabilitation Area for Promotion of Plant Growth in Open Cut Coal Mine in Kalimantan Area in Indonesia

Abstract

Rehabilitation is one of the important and considerable topics for an environment protection in mine closure process. A lot of open cut mine keep the topsoil in the natural forest during soil stripping process to spread the topsoil to rehabilitation area for success of revegetation. However, there are some considerable points for handling with the topsoil in situ such as the soil properties and severe compaction by heavy equipment. Therefore, we carried out field researches and laboratory experiments to investigate the characteristics of soil spread in rehabilitation area in terms of plant growth: particle size distribution, Atterberg limits, soil bulk density, soil moisture contents, soil pH and soil EC, permeability, and soil hardness. As a result of the series of tests, different types of soil with natural soil were backfilled in the rehabilitation area due to mixing with overburden. This result suggest that revegetation process should be designed with consideration of soil conditions.