Red Stone Farm wetland mitigation bank, by Karen Reynolds

Touring the emergent wetlands at Red Stone Farm.

Wetland ecosystems are diminishing at a faster rate than any other ecosystem in the United States.  They are often drained or filled to make flat, usable farmland, although they are also destroyed during the construction of roads, housing developments, or industrial sites.  Prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, little thought was given to restoring wetlands that had been damaged through industrial development.  However, Section 404 of the Clean Water Act set in place standards and requirements for the restoration and mitigation of destroyed wetlands, overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers.

                        

Mitigation is the process of restoring, enhancing, or protecting wetlands in proportion to those destroyed or damaged during building projects.  Any party that intends on building over a wetland can take one of four options: work around existing wetlands, recreate a wetland area on site, recreate a wetland area off site, or buy credits from a wetland mitigation bank.  Even in if the project decides to work around an existing wetland, they may still have to mitigate due to any damage or pollution that the project might cause.  In recent years, the use of mitigation banks has become the favored method, both by companies - for whom it is far easier to pay someone else to take care of their mitigation - and ecologists - who are recognizing the benefit of creating banks rather than isolated wetlands.  Mitigation banks can offer the restoration of a variety of different types of wetlands to best suit different project requirements and can provide a higher quality wetland than an individual restoration attempt.

The process of applying for
mitigation bank status
requires writing hundreds
of pages in reports.

It may seem strange to offset the destruction of one wetland by putting in another one in a completely different area, but there are some clear benefits to using mitigation banks.  Firstly, the banks are highly regulated and are required to be put into areas where they will thrive.  This means that wetlands will be restored in areas that were originally wetlands, so the soil, hydrology, and plant life will be easier to restore.  These areas can be specifically chosen to be far away from metropolitan areas, which leads to cleaner wetlands with fewer invasive species.  Secondly, larger areas of wetlands tend to have a higher success rate than smaller ones.  This is because they have a smaller edge compared to their surface area, reducing the entry points for invasives.  Also, the larger area can include forest buffer zones and effectively protect a larger part of the watershed.  Thirdly, mitigation banks are highly monitored and all the data collected becomes part of public record, creating a huge source of data on wetland restoration that can be used for future programs.  Finally, mitigation banks are required to place a perpetual conservation easement on the the restored land that permanently protects it from ever being destroyed.  

The wetland mitigation bank on Red Stone Farm consists of 480 acres of old farmland, forest, and current wetlands that are being restored on Drausin Wulsin’s property in Pike County, Ohio.  Mr. Wulsin is a former trustee of Berea College and currently manages his family’s 1,100 acre farm which also hosts an organic dairy and herds of grass fed cows and sheep for meat production.  At the present time, the bank consists of 196 contiguous acres of wetlands and buffer zones that include emergent wetlands, forested wetlands, and upland forests.  This progress represents Phase I of the restoration.  The remaining acreage will be restored in two more phases at a later date and may be expanded to include stream restoration along with the current ecosystems.  During our time with Mr. Wulsin and the bank manager Dr. Barry Dalton we toured the various wetland ecosystems to better understand the process of restoration on a mitigation bank and how this particular bank functions.

Phase I involved removing beaver dams that had trapped water into a small lake and flattening the land so that it could not be blocked and flooded again.  The area had spent several years under water, which had killed off the trees that had been growing there.  These dead trees are now part of the emergent wetland and provide useful habitats for many species of birds.  This first phase also involved planting 19,500 wetland trees by hand and spreading 500 lbs of native rush, grass, and wildflower seeds.  Currently the wetlands being monitored and invasive species are being removed.  This will continue for a 10 year period, after which the wetland will be allowed to sustain itself without interference.  The area also includes a piece of existing forested wetland that serves as a comparison plot and is a Category 3 wetland.  The EPA classifies wetlands into three different categories depending on their quality.  The scale goes from 1 - low quality- to 3 - highest quality, making this plot a valuable resource and a goal for the newly restored forested wetlands.

Touring a mature forested wetland
at the mitigation bank. 

Despite having a closed
canopy, the forested
wetland still supports sedges
and rushes in the under-story

The soil in a forested wetland
is mostly anaerobic, giving it
the bluish tinge.

The mitigation bank can sell credits to entities requiring Category 1 wetland restoration within the Huntington Corps District, which occupies most of southern Ohio, and Category 2 wetland restoration within the watershed of the lower Scioto River, Paint Creek, Ohio Brush Creek, and East Little Miami River watersheds.  Although it was previously believed that the bank would never be able to sell Category 3 credits, the effectiveness of the restoration efforts has made this a future possibility.  

The operation of a wetland mitigation bank can be a profitable endeavor; each acre of restored wetland can be sold for as much as $60,000 and stream mitigation can be sold for $300-$400 per linear foot.  However, the start-up costs for such a project can be very steep.  The Army Corps of Engineers allows 30% of the credits to be sold in advance to help cover costs, but this is dependent on there being an existing market for the credits.  The bank at Red Stone Farm has been in progress for nearly 15 years and, according to Mr, Wulsin, is only starting to become profitable.  Our time at Red Stone Farm has provided us with valuable insight into the way that government agencies, regulations, and economics all play an important role in the restoration process.  Mr, Wulsin’s operation successfully blends sustainable agriculture and wetland mitigation into a model that works with the existing ecosystem, is economically feasible, and provides a valuable service. 

More information on the Red Stone Farm can be found at http://redstonefarm.org/index.html.

Red Stone Farm's cattle herd are grassfed
and solar powered. Over time, they will
build better and deeper soil on the land.

Guiding a lost calf to its mother.

Jordan Engel loves lambs!

Why Ecological Restoration Isn't Just About the Environment - by Jordan Engel

I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the principles of ecological restoration and how restoration projects fit into a human framework. For folks who work professionally in the field of ecological restoration, local people are as much of a concern in projects as the ecosystems themselves. This is because they acknowledge the interconnected relationship of the natural and human worlds.  All humans, whether we realize it or not, are a part of the biosphere – the natural world – as we receive our sustenance from it and interact with the natural systems (often destructively). In a recent report by the UN Environmental Program, the world’s leading scientists have at last recognized the cyclical relationship that cultures and nature share, documenting that, “Cultural change, such as loss of cultural and spiritual values, languages, and traditional knowledge and practices, is a driver that can cause increasing pressures on biodiversity…In turn, these pressures impact human well-being.” In light of this, effective restoration projects are ones that:

1. Engage local communities and stakeholders.
2. Address the need for early economic returns to the local communities.
3. Value the input of local and indigenous knowledge.  

The forest's ability to retain moisture
is clearly visible here. Because water
is life, another advantage of the forest
is supporting human life. The rate of
population loss in Central Appalachia
is one of the highest in the country, in
part because of the detrimental health
effects of living there. 

In a sense, ecological restoration goes beyond the environment. It is bio-cultural restoration – the process of assisting the recovery of the world’s natural and cultural systems that have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. We’ve recently witnessed bio-cultural restoration taking place in Eastern Kentucky with the work of Dr. Tammy Horn from Coal Country Beeworks. Tammy comes from the mountains herself, having been born in Harlan County, and confessed to us that much of her inspiration came from her grandfather who kept bees while she was growing up. It was the traditional knowledge of mountain beekeeping that both informed Tammy’s work and is what she is attempting to restore. Traditional communities, like those of the Southern mountains, tend to have a much greater knowledge of their environment – an awareness that is crucial for sustainable living – while modern communities tend to ignore their relationship with the Earth. In fact, it is that perceived severance of people and the environment by this culture that has led to much of the destruction of biodiversity and has created the need for ecological restoration.

Tammy Horn in one of her bee yards.

Tammy also realizes the need for local economic benefits along with ecological restoration. Commercial beeswax cosmetics in this country predominately use imported bee products because of the pesticides and other toxic chemicals that make their way into the hives. Ultimately, Coal Country Beeworks envisions a Central Appalachian “bee corridor.” These bees, because of their isolation from industrial agriculture, have cleaner wax than is found throughout most of the country and could soon support a host of sustainable jobs in the region. Other contributions to the local economy from the bee corridor are raw honey and the pollinating services of the bees.

Supporting the revival of traditional cultures, as Tammy is doing, is so crucial to ecological restoration because of the biological and cultural extinction crises that are currently affecting the Earth. Ethnobotanist Luisa Maffi calls it a “global epidemic of sameness,” that lately is erasing a human language every two weeks and a species every few minutes, many of which are unrecorded before they vanish from the Earth. It is our role as restorers to not only stop the destruction of biological and cultural diversity, but reverse it. Taking from the lessons of ecological restoration, it is apparent that we need to look to traditional communities for the answers and support them as we repair the Earth.

The Appalachian coal fields in 1984, when mining employees
in Kentucky numbered about 35,000. 

The Appalachian coal fields in 2012. While surface mining has
taken over much of the landscape, Kentucky mining
employment is down to about 15,000. The ecological and
economic situation in the region is worsening and the need
for restoration has never been greater.

St. John's Wetland, Day 2 by Emily Grace Sarver-Wolf

   Today the Ecological Restoration class continued its work in the St. John’s educational wetland in the form of invasive species removal; namely high bush honeysuckle, and poison hemlock. High bush honeysuckle is a highly invasive species from Asia that can have allelopathic qualities on the soil. It has been known to smother the understory and any young trees in mature forests, so that after the older trees die, only the honeysuckle remains, effectively choking the forest. High bush honeysuckle is not a common wetland invasive, but it does like well drained hillsides, such as the piece of land between a river or creek and the ecosystems beyond, known as the riparian buffer. Our goal for the day was to clear the riparian buffer of invasive species.

Karen Reynolds removing
bush honeysuckle.

Mason Howell, our fearless leader used a chainsaw to cut down the honeysuckle and any other invasives, and Dr. Richard Olson himself applied Glyphosate (round up is the brand name) herbicide to the severed honeysuckle stumps to try and keep them from re-sprouting. The rest of us hauled the honeysuckle out from the trees and piled the branches to be burned later. While the area we worked on was not huge, the quantity of honeysuckle that we removed was remarkable. Mason Howell said that cutting the honey suckle off is just the beginning. A foliar spray will need to be applied later in the year to ensure that any stump sprouts that come up are killed, and to ensure that the grass is not harmed. 

I know our class has really enjoyed working with Mr. Howell. Wetlands are an important ecosystem that have been largely drained to use as farmland. However, wetlands provide important habitat for many species, and the act as a filter for ground water. The St. John's wetland is primarily for education services, so it is more of a demonstration than a large-scale restoration effort. However, many generations of young children will be able to study this vital Kentucky ecosystem, and teach environmental stewardship for years to come.

Woodland edge before.

Woodland edge after.

St. John's Wetland, By Rebecca Shaw

The man-made wetlands were created on a former pumpkin farm.

Julius Neill and Emily Grace
Sarver-Wolf plant a chinkapin oak
to restore the riparian forest.

Today our Ecological Restoration course traveled to just north of Lexington Kentucky where we worked on a wetland project for St. John's Catholic School. The goal of the management plan is to take a piece of rolling farmland and turn it into lowland wetland. This project was started last year and will provide an outdoor classroom for the St. John's school, it will serve as an educational tool to teach children about wild riparian areas and the importance of nature.

Karen Reynolds seeds the wetland
edge with a diverse mix of
native sedges and rushes.

Our class worked with Mason Howell to reestablish a riparian buffer, a tree line along river and stream banks, which will help to protect the adjacent river from runoff and sedimentation. We planted forty trees including scarlet oaks, chinkapin  oaks, northern red oaks, pawpaws, and silver dogwoods. It was a lot of  work digging all of those holes, but the soil was perfect for planting trees. The loose and mineral rich earth was a a great planting medium and knowing that all of those trees would really do well made the labor well worth it.

Emily Grace and Becca seed the edge.

We also prepared the banks of the wetland for grasses and rushes by raking back any dead plant material on the shoreline. Removing this dead fiber exposed rich loamy soil that was then seeded with a variety of native wetland grass, flower, and rush seeds. Plugs, which are plants grown from seeds in tall skinny pots, were planted along the shoreline to introduce native, water loving flowers. These plants included cardinal flower, swamp milkweed, blazing star  and obedient flower. These plants were placed in groups of 3-5 to encourage good pollination which will help the plants to reproduce and spread seeds throughout the entire wetland area.

Jordan Engel and Becca Shaw plant
"obedient plant," a native perennial
that is common along wetland edges. 

Throughout the day Mason Howell educated the class on native species, proper planting methods, the goals for St. Johns wetland, and countless other topics. We also learned about invasive species removal and worked to dispose of poison hemlock plants that have become well established around the entire property. After a day of romping in the mud doing heavy labor, under sunny and rainy conditions, I look forward to our next day at St. Johns Wetland, where we will be working on invasive species removal. We will be disposing of  more poison hemlock and Japanese Honey Suckle.

Julius Neill removes invasive poison hemlock.

Conclusions to our first trip, By Julius Neill

May 20^th, 2013

Hello everyone,

We prayed last evening in hopes of a rain free day and rejoiced when the skies remained clear. Today’s main task was data collection at Kentucky University Reforestation Research Geohydrology Site. Dr. Sarah Hall led our group containing summer interns Yoshua Reece and Reena Martin, classmates Emily-Grace Sarver-Wolf‎, Jordan Engel‎, Karen Reynolds, Rebecca Shaw, myself (Julius Neill), and our resident Berea College Sustainability Director and summer 1 professor of the course Introduction to Ecological Restoration Richard Olson, in data collection. Splitting into pairs we each took one

The group at a research plot of unweathered gray sandstone.

square meter ground vegetation samples for plant diversity and soil microbial analysis. The site has been created with the help of U.K. and A.R.R.I. (Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative) to measure soil infiltration of rough, uneven terrain and the resulting effects of weathered and unweathered spoils on plant growth and successional regrowth of forests. We consequently discovered that brown spoils, which are partially weathered mine spoils that are found between the top layer of organic and mineral soil and the bottom layer of unweathered parent rock, appear to be better suited for reforestation after coal extraction. The implication of this research is quite beneficial for everyone. Energy and technology help progress humankind to higher standards but we constantly must work to find solutions to also maintaining our parent material, Earth. If I have learned anything it is that we are what we eat. Forests are an essential ecological resource. They provide us with wildlife to eat and admire, air quality that cannot be surpassed, and micro climates that protect water and nutrient cycles.Additionally, local resources like wood, coal, and water provide us necessities like economic drivers and life.

Dr. Sarah Hall gives instructions to the class.

Today we got to experience a lot of forests as we returned to Berea from Perry, Leslie, Letcher, and Pike Counties. Our first journey finished as a success; our van proved to be resilient, our goals were all accomplished, and we learned valuable firsthand experiences with Appalachia’s Honey corridor project creator Tammy Horn, James River Coal Companies’ President Brian Patton over a meet and greet lunch, and lastly efforts from the past two days excursions with Sarah Hall to collect data for her UK and ARRI affiliates research. I also learned about myself along the way. I enjoyed hiking in Robinson forest, getting to grill out for everyone, and being reborn as I witnessed a sunrise on top of a scenic outpost. I also learned a ton from our new friends that are too numerous to mention here. And I have come to a lot of valuable conclusions on what I now consider to be appropriate action in becoming an agent for my own goals. I  cannot believe to have been so fortunate! The first week of our course has been great. I feel that our “EcRest,” (sorry everyone I can't resist a joke) class really bonded over the last five day trip and formed a strong bond of solidarity in the efforts to learn the basics and essentials of reforestation. I am excited for a break tomorrow, but also in the momentum our group will carry into our next excursion to Scott County for a new lesson in wetland restoration.

 To finish I’d like to thank Dr. Richard Olson for providing us with the background information, travel arrangements, and offering the course. Also I’d like to thank: Dr. Sarah Hall for providing lunches and experience with reforestation research data collection opportunities, as well as Tammy Horn for her efforts; and the several coal companies that gave their time to give us extremely valuable personal interactions that were friendly, informative, and generous, also UK and the overseers of the Robinson forest cabins, and lastly to University of Pikeville for allowing us to stay in one of their dormitories (which was very clean). I appreciate you reading and hope you find our blog to be engaging and informative. Please leave us a comment and let us know what you’re thinking,

Regards,

Julius Neill

Eastern Kentucky, Day 4 by Karen Reynolds

Volunteers planting black walnuts at the Fishtrap research
plot in the fall of 2011.

Today’s restoration adventures took us to the Fishtrap Wildlife Management Area in Pike County to delve into the exciting world of data collection.  Fishtrap is located on an inactive mountain top removal (MTR) site that has not been mined in over 15 years.  Despite this long recovery period, much of the area is still grasslands with a few trees and bushes scattered throughout the grass.  This area is perfect for studying tree growth in this common environment for MTR sites.

A two year old seedling
that will soon outgrow its
protective shelter.

Two years later at the same research plots of black walnut
trees on a legacy mine site in Pike County.

Dr. Sarah Hall’s research studies the growth of black walnut trees on MTR sights under various conditions.  The seedlings we examined today in the twelve plots were being tested for two variables.  First, half of the black walnuts were planted from seed, while the remaining plants were planted from one year old seedlings that had been cultivated in a nursery.  In general, reforestation projects plant seedlings to increase the success rate of the plants.  However, this increases the cost of the project and the amount of labor necessary to plant the trees.  If there is a negligible difference between the growth and survival rates of black walnuts seedlings and seeds, than it would make sense to simply plant the seeds themselves rather than going through the trouble of raising and planting the seedlings.

The second variable that is being studied is the effectiveness of using a protective plastic tube to shelter the young trees from herbivores and competition from the other plants in the area.  These tubes are made from a nearly opaque, sturdy plastic that is specifically designed to allow the wavelengths of light that are required for photosynthesis through to the growing tree.  The tubes are approximately three feet high and are built with a perforated strip that will allow the tube to break open once the tree grows too large for it.  Unfortunately, they are not biodegradable and will remain in the landscape long after their usefulness has expired.  Biodegradable options are available, but they tend to be less effective because they break down before the tree has stopped benefiting from the protection.  This study will examine whether or not these tubes make enough of a difference to justify the cost, time, and environmental impact of using them.

Oh, and it rained.

In total, there are 600 trees at Fishtrap separated into twelve plots with fifty trees each.  Because there are the two separate variables, there are four treatment options that could be included in a plot: seedlings with tubing, seedlings without tubing, seeds with tubing, and seeds without tubing.  These trees were planted in 2011, partly with the help of volunteers from Berea College – our own Jordan Engel helped plant some of the trees.  The black walnut seeds were also gathered by education majors from Berea.  We were there to collect another set of data points on the growth of the various tree groups.  Because there is a year difference in age between the seed and seedling groups, it is important to have growth rate data, rather than just comparing overall growth.  We were responsible for collecting the height of each tree and its diameter at the base.  We also noted w  This data will be compiled and analyzed by Dr. Hall and her two interns for the summer, Reena Martin and Yoshua Reece. 
hich trees were not present.

Emily Grace Sarver -Wolf on today's reclamation site.

We All Live Downstream, So Let the Honey Flow by Jordan Engel

Vandalism is the number one threat to beekeeping on surface mines.
These hives have been stolen, toppled, and shot at, leaving
no choice but to install this tall fence to protect the bees.

Biodiversity hotspots in the US

The Ecological Restoration class said our fond farewells to Dr. Tammy Horn today after spending three days touring her Eastern Kentucky bee yards on mountaintop removal mines. Our last day together was spent on a mine site in Letcher County. The largest of her yards, containing some twenty hives, is located here near the headwaters of three major rivers - the Cumberland, the Kentucky, and the Big Sandy. As the source of so many streams, the health of Eastern Kentucky's ecosystems has wide ranging effects for all those who live downstream. The ecological services provided by the mesophytic forest include filtration and purification of water, erosion control, and flood control, among many others. Eastern Kentucky is also home to some of the greatest biodiversity in the world, much of which is endemic to the region and threatened with extinction as habitat loss and invasive species continue to disrupt the fragile ecosystem.

Tammy's project, Coal Country Bee Works, has worked for many years to restore the forests lost to surface mining in a way that better supports pollinator habitat. One of the most undervalued trees, says Tammy, is the sourwood. Blooming in early July, the sourwood provides a good source of pollen in the lull between the blooms of the spring and fall seasons. This is called a bridge species, and its importance in pollinator reclamation is vital. Conversely, pollinator reclamation is vital to the restoration of native ecosystems because about 90% of angiosperms rely on animal pollination.

Our work today involved continuing the process of dusting Tammy's hives with powered sugar, which induces the bees to clean themselves and rids their bodies of parasitic varroa mites. After two days of practice the group was efficient at this but perhaps most impressive was our handling of the hives on an overcast day when most of the bees were at home in the hives.

In the latter part of the day, we helped Tammy in her ongoing work to establish a queen production program. Bee genetics can make or break the viability of a hive, and queen rearing is how commercial beekeepers manipulate the evolutionary process. Through a process called grafting, we extracted larvae from a hive with desirable genetics and moved them into synthetic queen cups where worker bees would feed it a diet of royal jelly, developing them into queens. The queen bees produced from these mine sites will either replace Tammy's older queens or will be sold - further establishing hives in Central Appalachia that are genetically adapted to the region. From these hives, Tammy hopes to restore the tradition of commercial beekeeping in the mountains. Thinking ahead, she's starting a new economy on the back of the old one.

Karen Reynolds searches for tiny worker larvae

Jordan Engel attempts queen grafting.

Eastern Kentucky, Day 2 by Emily Grace Sarver-Wolf

The class poses on top of a multi-million dollar truck used for
mountaintop removal coal mining.

Tammy assessing a hive.

Our first stop today was at an active surface mine site in Perry County, where we worked with Tammy Hornhttp://www.eri.eku.edu/coal-country-beeworks) to help treat the hives there for Varroa mites, to do some assessment of hive health, and do an assessment of honey production. This surface mine had a lovely crop of young volunteer sourwood trees that the bees will appreciate when they bloom later in the year. To treat for Varroa mites, we used powdered sugar to encourage hygienic behavior in the bees. Tammy assured us that the bees would have everything cleaned out in a day or two. We made sure the boxes we dusted had brood, since Tammy instructed us on the life cycle of Varroa mites, and informed us that mites reproduce in cells of brood (mostly drones). Dismantling the hives gave us plenty of opportunity to learn interesting facts about bees, the plants they pollinate, and their life cycles in general; we even got to see a live queen in one hive, and some students tried some royal jelly from a different hive. Some students seeded a special pollinator friendly wildflower mix, which will hopefully come up with the next rain, and we used a problematic weed eater to help reduce rodent invasion of the hives.

Jordan Engel seeding the mine site.

                We ate a lunch of sandwiches as a group before heading out to our second surface mine. We continued with our hive assessment and mite treatment. The group was much more efficient on our third time around. Students did some seeding here as well, and we got to look at some of the past reforestation work done on this mine. The trees were planted about a year ago, but the mining on this site had ceased about 7 years ago. Before planting the land, the hillside was “ripped” to loosen the soil to help the trees root and grow. The trees that were planted were also specially chosen to be pollinator friendly. We also got to look at some 15/16 American chestnut

Inspecting a planting of blight-resistant
Chestnut trees.

hybrids that seem to be doing well. Throughout our tour of the mine, we spoke with several different mine employees and managers who were all very nice and welcoming; even to a bunch of college kids with lots of questions.

This particular mine currently has permits to mine about 800 acres, but thousands of acres had already been mined at this site alone. There also are plans to mine some of the adjacent mountaintops, resulting in thousands more acres of mine sites. We learned that in order for a coal seam to make economic sense to mine, there needs to be a 35:1 ratio. That is, 35 inches of overburden to one inch of

Dr. Olson at the bee yard.

Jordan Engel on an active surface mine.

coal. If there is more overburden, then it doesn’t make economic sense to mine it, and if there is less, then it is that much more viable. This mine employed ~43 people, not including the contractors. We got to look/crawl on some of the HUGE mining equipment which gave me an appreciation for the scale of earth that is moved through the mountaintop removal mining. We got a close look at the ripper (whose work we saw earlier) and the tires alone were taller than each one of us. This machine uses approximately 400 gallons of diesel per shift. We also got to climb on a dump truck, which also had huge tires, which cost approximately $30,000 each, and each truck had 8 tires. This whole site uses approximately 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day, which is brought in by the tractor trailer load once a day. Estimating the price of diesel at $4, it costs about $32,000 per day to fuel the mining equipment, which is a staggeringly large number to me. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, a ton of coal (2,000 pounds) from Central Appalachia is currently valued at $67.27 (http://www.eia.gov/coal/news_markets/index.cfm). The economics of coal companies and the sheer quantity of money and technology that goes into providing our nation with electricity is astonishing to me.

Our guide for the day was kind
enough to show us the equipment,
like this massive tire imported from
Russia.

Throughout our expedition to Eastern Kentucky, I know I personally have been overwhelmed with the natural beauty of the landscape. While we have seen mountaintop removal sites that that have been restored well, they still have a fraction of the biodiversity that they once had. Most of the sites look more like savannah or prairie than Appalachian forest. There can’t be too many restoration efforts, and there is a somewhat endless amount of work to be done. Our class tours of these mine sites has certainly provided me with new perspective.

Eastern Kentucky, Day 1 By Becca Shaw

Our first day of our five day journey in the Eastern Kentucky coal fields started with a two hour trip from Berea to Leslie County, Kentucky. Once we arrived in Leslie County we met up with Dr. Tammy Horn from Coal Country Bee Works (http://www.eri.eku.edu/coal-country-beeworks ). Our first stop on our day of work was a surface mining operation where Horn has a bee yard. During the drive up to the bee yard we were able to see the mountains before, during, and after the mining process. It was interesting to see the various stages of succession in the landscape starting with the un-mined, lower portions of the mountains with tall hemlock, oak, and poplar trees, which soon faded away to barren ground and large jagged rocks. The portions of the mountain that had been mined less recently had taken on a look that is entirely foreign to the original landscape of the Appalachian Mountains, grassy savannas with small, staggered trees.  Once we reached the bee yard the area looked like a new growth forest with small trees, scattered wildflowers and grass.

Becca Shaw smokes the hive to mask the bee's pheromones
and calm  them while we examine their brood.

 At this site we learned about basic treatment for Varroa Mites which are a tiny brown tick like insect that attach themselves to bees during foraging in order to be spread from colony to colony. In the hive these mites can reproduce in ten days, using the pupa stage of the bee as a food source. For the first step we learned how to properly apply smoke to the hive, this smoking tells the bees to go into the hives and to eat honey, which helps them to calm down and be easier to work with. The smoker consists of a metal can with a spout on one end and a billow on the other. The can is filled with pine straw and burlap and then lit. The enclosed cylinder with slow burning materials creates a steady stream of cool smoke that will not hurt the bees.  In order to help reduce the mite count in the colonies we dusted the inside of the hive with powdered sugar. This sugar acts as a trigger to make the bees groom themselves and clean the hive, any Varroa mites that are found at this time will be discarded by the bees and fall to the bottom of the hive.

A mining employee hydroseeding an extensive reclamation
site with a mixture that included many flowering planting
that the bees like.

After our quick treatment of the bees we met up with a group of men who were working on the preliminary  During the mountain top removal process all of the original forest is removed and what is left over is a mixture of rocks, sand and soil. This crew was using a hydro seeding process to reestablish plants in this area. This process involves taking grass seed, sometimes flower seeds, fertilizer, paper mulch, and water, and combining them all in a giant tanker truck. A blue coloring agent is also added to this mixture. The tanker truck sprays the hydro seed mixture out through a hose, about the size of a fire hose, onto the bare ground. According to the operation supervisor it costs about $1000 per acre of land. With over 1.4 million acres of mountain top removal in the USA, this is an extremely costly process.
step of reclaiming an area that had been recently mined. Our first view of the site that we visited, as we crested the hill, was an enormous bowl that had been carved out of the mountain during the mining process. The sheer size of this area was almost impossible to fathom due to the fact that there was absolutely no vegetation left on the steep rocky slopes.

After leaving this site we had lunch with the president of a major coal company that has operations in Perry County, KY, and in several other states. During our meal we asked questions about the projected future of coal and other subjects including the production and shipping of coal from Appalachia.

After lunch we went to a second mountain top removal (MTR) site, also in Leslie County. This area was a mine site that was no longer active, all of the ground was covered with grasses, and trees had both been planted, and also volunteered. It was very much so open grassland, but it was exciting to see that trees were starting to take hold and that hopefully one day it might be a forest again. At this site we worked on the same mite treatment as before, dusting with powdered sugar. We also planted a mixture of wildflowers that will provide food for the honey bees later in the summer.  This seed included cone flowers, sunflowers, and black-eyed Susans among others.

Becca, Jordan, and Emily Grace admire
Robinson Forest

An evening hike to the fire tower at
Robinson Forest - the largest tract of
forest in Eastern Kentucky, surrounded
almost entirely by mining. Dr. Sarah 
Hall described much of the biodiversity
we saw on the way.