Post Mining Land Reclamation With Bamboo

Bamboo is a tree that is easy to grow, tall quickly and has many benefits. One of them is the use of bamboo trees for post-mining land reclamation. Damaged and barren post-mining land is indeed not easy to plant directly. Certain treatments or efforts are needed so that the land can be planted with certain plants. When the land has become fertile soil, of course almost all plants can be planted on the land. And to achieve these conditions it takes time and a process that is not short.

Soil improvement efforts in the sense of improving soil fertility are the first thing to do so that plants can grow well on the land. Plants that can be planted at this stage are also only certain types of plants such as pioneer plants in the form of fast growing plants such as legumes. And bamboo as a group of grass plants is also easy to plant and grow on marginal lands such as post-mining land. Availability of water, adequate nutrients, pH or adequate soil acidity are some of the things needed to achieve optimal growth.

As an illustration, sand is a bad planting medium because there are almost no nutrients in it and this is almost the same as the condition of post-mining land in general. Substances or organic materials need to be added so that they become fertilizers or nutrients for the land. Animal dung is the best organic material for this, so integration with livestock is the best concept for post-mining land reclamation. Biochar with its various advantages also needs to be added to the land. Biochar can be produced from biomass wastes from plantations, agriculture and forestry for this purpose. The use of biochar on a wide scale can also provide income in the form of carbon credits because biochar is applied to the soil as a carbon sink with carbon sequestration.

Bamboo trees as a type of grass plant have fibrous roots. Large bamboo clumps have a large network of fibrous roots as well. The success of bamboo roots is one of the keys to bamboo growth. The use of biochar in bamboo nurseries will also improve the roots of the bamboo seedlings produced. While in bamboo plantations, the use of biochar also has many benefits, especially on post-mining land the results will look more real, such as maintaining moisture, more available nutrients, not acidic soil pH and so on. Biochar is useful for improving soil fertility, so it can be used in nurseries and plantations.

Currently a number of mining companies have carried out land reclamation with these trees, but most of them are still testing and do not yet have a comprehensive concept. Post-mining land reclamation with bamboo in Indonesia is estimated to start in 2010 or has been going on for about 12 years until now. A number of bamboo species have also been identified as suitable for the post-mining area. Scale up or capacity enlargement is an important and current challenge, especially when it is supported by information on 12 years of reclamation with these bamboo trees. With this capacity expansion, besides bamboo production, commercial production can also be achieved, the application of biochar will also find its optimum benefits, namely improving soil fertility and carbon sinks (carbon sequenstration).

The use of bamboo in particular is an aspect that has not received serious attention in these reclamation projects. Whereas only with the use of bamboo which is a plantation product can the reclamation effort be known to provide economic benefits or not. The lack of serious attention to the use of bamboo is thought to be because the bamboo reclamation is still in the experimental stage with a small area. But if it has been pursued professionally, the economic aspect will become an important concern.

The use of bamboo, for example, is to make people's houses around the mine. With bamboo treated first and also using the art of building architecture, the bamboo house produced will be of high quality, in the sense of being sturdy and beautiful and far from being cheap. This will reduce the use of certain wood for houses, some of which have limited types, such as ironwood in Kalimantan. Indeed, there are many ways to use the bamboo, but it is necessary to choose the best one based on the related conditions and situations. Ruminant farming, especially for the production of organic matter or land fertilizers, will also require cages or in rotational grazing, poles for paddock will also be required. The cages and poles can also be made with these bamboo products.

And when bamboo production is used for biomass production and then used for biochar production, it is also technically possible. But economically, it is necessary to study whether it also provides benefits, both from the effect of improving soil fertility and carbon credit. In this case, the most important thing is the production of the biomass itself so that the bamboo species that produce the most biomass are selected. The more soils that can be repaired with biochar treatment, the more land that can be recovered so that it becomes productive land. When the soil is fertile again, various food crops are also very possible to be planted on the land. The increasing population also demands more food needs, so food production needs to be increased, including the use of these recoverable lands.

Cocopeat and Biochar

Both cocopeat and biochar have uses in agriculture, but there are a number of differences between the two. Cocopeat is mainly used as a planting medium because of its water holding capacity, while biochar in addition to having the ability to hold water like cocopeat also raises soil pH, holds or makes nutrients more available (nutrient retention), and also becomes a colony of soil microbes so that organic matter becomes rapidly decomposed and absorbed by plants. Cocopeat will also decompose in a not too long time like compost while biochar can exist and not decompose for hundreds of years. Under these conditions, biochar is also used to store CO2 (carbon sequenstration) and obtain carbon credits with a carbon sink mechanism.

 

Choose Biochar or Cocopeat?
With these advantages, choosing biochar would be better. Moreover, the cocopeat can also be used for biochar production. The carbon removal program to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is also in line with the application of the biochar. Increasing global awareness of climate change and global warming makes carbon removal programs that also provide economic benefits from carbon credits likely to continue to increase in the near future. This cannot be done with cocopeat.

Converting cocopeat into biochar is also not difficult, even with a variety of simple (low tech) equipments it can be done. But for a large capacity so that the carbon credit program can run, it requires modern pyrolysis equipment with a large capacity. With this equipment, in addition to biochar production, there is also a number of excess energy that can be used for various purposes, one of which is drying cocopeat before it becomes raw material for biochar with such pyrolysis equipment.

The Urgency of Ex-Coal Mine Reclamation With Biochar

The large number of ex-coal mines that are not reclaimed causes various environmental problems and even life safety. There have been many casualties from the former coal mine pit. The simple logic should be that after the coal deposit is taken or extracted during the mining activity, the land is returned and repaired so that the quality is better than before the mining activity or at least the same, but not worse so that various environmental problems arise. The era of decarbonization is accelerating because of the driving force of climate change and global warming. Fossil fuels, especially coal, are starting to be abandoned, of course, including the coal mining activity itself. Meanwhile, the area of former coal mines which reaches millions of hectares is a lot of environmental problems today.

When the quality of the soil is improved so that it has high fertility then this becomes a very extraordinary potential so that a number of important activities can be carried out, such as agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry. With such conditions, the effort to self-sufficiency or food sovereignty is not impossible. Technically, it can be analyzed which of the agricultural, livestock and forestry sectors can reach the goal faster, namely food independence or sovereignty. But before going far and doing business on the ex-mining land, to be more specific what products will be made, the basic question is how to improve the condition of the damaged soil and the scale is also massive?

The application of biochar to the soil is a surefire solution in an effort to repair damaged soils. Depending on how severe the damage is, the characteristics of the soil type and the final quality level being targeted will determine the application or dosage of the biochar. In addition to improving the soil, the biochar application also absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, thereby reducing the concentration of CO2 from the atmosphere or is a carbon negative scenario. Biochar buried in the soil becomes a carbon sink, similar to creating a conservation forest to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. How much biochar is buried so that it can be calculated that the CO2 absorbed into the carbon sink can be sold on the carbon market and get carbon credit. Biochar itself is able to last in the soil for hundreds of years and is not decomposed for a long time. Even when the land has been repaired with biochar and then a conservation forest is made on it, the carbon credit obtained are double, namely from the application of biochar itself and from the conservation forest. But once again, of course, economic factors are another important consideration, so as above, after soil fertility is improved with biochar, there are a number of options for using the land. Of course which one provides the best economic benefits will be the choice.

Millions of hectares of land can be recovered so that its benefits will be maximized. Say, for example, that one million hectares of land can be recovered and then used for activities that support food security or self-sufficiency such as agriculture and animal husbandry, then how much output can be calculated. Even better if there can be a surplus of food production so that it can export. Or even in the longer term, the land is reforested into conservation forest, so how much CO2 can be absorbed by the forest plus the application of biochar. Of course very much. Then why have to build a food estate but have to clear forest land, while there are other better ways? Namely not only restoring but improving the condition of the land even better before the coal mining activity was carried out.