The purpose of this study is to identify and describe those spatial and temporal factors which influence successional trends of naturally revegetating mining disturbances . Vegetation communities ranging from 2 to 80 years in age are described on 67 sites disturbed by placer mining . Principal components analysis, a gradient analysis technique , is used to transform site environment variables into single component scores.
Regression analysis is then used to isolate the determinants of vegetation patterns . The influence of site environmental conditions account for 48.8% of the variation in total vegetation cover, 8.2% of the variation is explained by site age, and 43.0% by other residual factors. These residuals may include the influence of adjacent vegetated areas, soil movement as a result of erosion, climatic variability, sampling error, and chance. Once confounding effects of site age and residual factors are partitioned, vegetation cover and site conditions are significantly correlated. Soil moisture, soil macropore space and slope angle comprise the major environmental influences. This information is used to identify the condition present mine sites may be left in when abandoned, in order to promote optimal natural revegetation .
A Study of the Natural Revegetation of Mining Disturbance in the Klondike Area, Yukon Territory
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