Soil Carbon Pools In Reclaimed Mineland of Ohio Under Different Ages and Landuses.

Characterization of reclaimed mine soil is a challenge due to its high heterogeneous nature. Particularly, determination of soil carbon (C) pool pose a great challenge due to intrinsic mixture of recently derived C with coal particles and basic parent materials like sandstone and limestone. In this experiment a newly developed chemi-thermal method was used to separate coal C from newly derived C. Soil C pool of recently reclaimed 9 yr-old grassland (NG) and 11 yr-old forest (NF) sites were compared with a 30 yr-old reclaimed grassland (OG) site. Beside that general physicochemical properties (bulk density, moisture percentage , pH, total N content, etc.) of reclaimed mine soils were also analyzed. Soil BD values was significantly higher in NG site (1.96 Mg m^-3) than OG (1.76 Mg m^-3). OG site had also significantly higher SOC pool (34.7 Mg ha^-1) than NG site (31.1 Mg ha^-1) within 0-10 cm soil depth. Considering soil profile depth of 0-40 cm, OG site contained significantly higher soil N pool (7.17 Mg ha^-1) than NF site (5.94 Mg ha^-1). Reclamation of mineland has the potential to improve soil physicochemical environment and to increase soil C pool.