Assessment and modelling of vegetation biomass in a major bauxite mine of Eastern Ghats, India
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Assessment and modelling of vegetation biomass in a major bauxite mine of Eastern Ghats, India Kakoli Banerjee1 · Chandan Kumar Sahoo1 · Rakesh Paul1 Received: 13 August 2020 / Accepted: 8 October 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Large-scale surface mining are the major causes for ecological disaster at the landscape level, but ecological restoration in post mining areas offers an opportunity to re-develop an ecosystem. The present research programme was undertaken in Panchapatmali Bauxite Mines in Koraput district of Odisha which is one of the biggest mines in Eastern Ghats ecoregion. The above ground biomass (AGB) and soil parameters inside and outside the mines (natural forest) were compared and their interrelationships were also tested at 1% level of significance. For the three dominant species Pinus insularis, Eucalyptus hybrid and Samenia saman, the regression coefficient (R2) values for AGB were significant with respect to DBH (R2 = 0.80–0.90), height (R2 = 0.35–0.76) and with basal area (R2 = 0.90–0.96). Species wise, maximum biomass was shown by Pinus insularis followed by Eucalyptus hybrid and Samenia saman which reveals that exotic species have overruled the indigenous species in the plantation areas. An accurate cokriging geospatial model with minimum errors predicted the AGB values to range from 45.6 to 416.4 t/ha compared to the observed biomass range 5.90–507.06 t/ha through the developed regression equation y = 1.003x + 0.24. The overall AGB of the reclaimed area was at par with the natural forest outside the mines. Increasing the pH level of soils, planting indigenous species and increasing green ground cover species will have lesser negative competition with the trees in the reclaimed zone that can restore the fragile ecosystem. Keywords Eastern ghats · Bauxite mines · Reclamation · Above ground biomass · Soil parameters · Geospatial modelling
Introduction Forest biomass and fields are renewable resources, which provide alternative energy supply in rural areas (Bungart and Huttal 2001). Heat production from different biomasses at global scale has been projected to reach 864 million tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) by 2040 from an estimated 364 million TOE recorded in 2013 (IEA 2017; Nakahara et al. 2019). With the adaptation of National Renewable Energy Act (NREA), 2015, the growth rate of bioenergy resources has accelerated to promote the production of energy, so that the dependence on fossil fuels can be minimized compensating with the socio-economic and environmental conditions. According to estimations, 25% of the net energy utilisation is met from biomass resources such as fuelwoods and other * Kakoli Banerjee [email protected] 1
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation of Natural Resources, Central University of Odisha, Landiguda, Koraput 764021, Odisha, India
forestry wastes (Kumar et al. 2002; Purohit and Fischer 2014). The renewable energy sources act as the means of economic development in a developing country like India and substit
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