As energy development continues to grow, a need for better reclamation and remediation techniques surfaced to return lands back to a productive, sustainable system for agricultural uses and ecological function.� The unprecedented, growth of the oil industry in North Plains has presented innumerable benefits, but also a few attendant challenges, particularly with spill remediation and land reclamation. Project objectives included 1) determining the effects of reclamation techniques on vegetation establishment and soil properties following energy extraction, and 2) determine the effects of remediation techniques on salt removal from the soil profile on brine contaminated lands.� One study consisted of reclaiming a 128 km long 3.5 dm diameter natural gas pipeline and a 22.86 m wide pipeline right-of-way.� The research design was a randomized block design with three plots per block and three blocks (replications). The pipeline corridor was seeded to a native mix using two seeding rates (TRT) at approximately 300 and 1500 (spiked) seeds per m2. The individual plots were 20-22 m x 6 m long providing trench, spoil, and travel sections to study and treated as a nested factor. The spike seeding resulted in higher basal cover than the normal seeding after one growing season. However, by the second growing season there was no difference in basal cover between the seeding rates, and basal cover was the same or higher than adjacent native grassland. There was no difference in planted or weed/exotic cover between normal seeding and the spike seeding in the different sections of the right of way: travel, trench or spoil. Because there was an even distribution of both the seedings and in the re-spread of topsoil, conditions created by the different right of way disturbances was not a factor. Spike seeding is effective in getting high levels of planted cover in the second growing season.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.