Land rehabilitation aims to restore damaged land, regardless of the cause. It is a complex process, with challenges such as cleaning up poisons and restoring natural vegetation. Agriculture is a major cause of land damage, with excessive watering and chemical use leading to soil salinity and pollution.
Land rehabilitation is the process of restoring damaged land to near its original condition. The original source of the damage, man-made or natural, is not important in the long run; although it affects the rehabilitation methods used. In most cases, land cannot be returned to its natural state. Since it is usually impossible to restore an area to its exact original condition, land rehabilitation simply focuses on improving the land as much as possible.
Land rehabilitation is not as simple as it might seem. Some things that appear to cause a lot of damage have little impact, while others are devastating. One of the biggest challenges of land rehabilitation is cleaning the poison from the ground. Many man made sites come along with poisons used for various things. Clearing them of earth is a long and difficult undertaking.
Natural disasters are usually quite low on the list of things that harm the earth. For all their destruction, most natural disasters have very little impact on the quality of the land. That said, sometimes, damage will occur due to human intervention. For example, a flood can pick up harmful chemicals from entering homes and factories which will then enter the water system.
Forestry also has a very low impact on the vitality of the land. While many people view tree felling as harmful, this is not necessarily the case. Modern forestry techniques of selective logging and replanting have minimized the impact of the industry on soil quality. Since forestry does not use harmful chemicals or cause deep soil destruction, they have also eliminated two of the common secondary land damages.
The modern open pit mine has a serious impact on the land. Land rehabilitation steps related to this area vary, but follow a general order. First, they attempt to clean up any harmful chemicals that may be in the soil or rocks of the site. Next, they fill the holes with clean rocks and dirt, using the removed material if possible. Finally, they shape the earth into a natural state and plant natural vegetation. This can be a very long and exhausting process.
Agriculture is one of the main causes of land reclamation. Farms often use lethal chemicals that can leach into the local water supply. Also, excessive watering increases the salinity in the topsoil, making it unable to grow anything. Fixing these two problems is an important part of land rehabilitation, and success has been limited. Modern farms have begun to move away from particularly harmful practices, but older farms remain a problem.
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