Nov 9, 2023 By Paul Paterra staff Writer ppaterra@observer-Reporter.Com 5 min read

Students at Washington & Jefferson College have been involved in a project involving experimental planting as a way .  

Stabilization of Coal Mine Overburden Through Vegetation has involved the efforts of Dr. Jason Kilgore, biology department chair, and most recently, senior Jonathan Grabowski of Pittsburgh. 

In mining, overburden (also called waste and spoil) is the material that lies above an area that lends itself to economical exploitation, such as the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body.

 

Funding was provided by Chance to Change Lives, a 501-c-3 nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering students from underserved backgrounds.

Its flagship program is called STEMnetX, designed to provide meaningful learning experiences for STEM career development opportunities for undergraduate and high school students.

“We identify the opportunities for research that liberal arts colleges are providing for students, not only enriching their lives but also making local impact in regions. But also helping students to pursue careers in STEM fields and that’s what our foundation is focused on., said Dr. Rama….”We also help students to pursue careers in STEM fields. “

During the last 18 months, Chance to Change Lives has invested $100,000 toward many research experiences. 

The W&J project is focused discovering what vegetation can stabilize is an abandoned coal mine overburden in Marianna. 

Four different types of grass – annual ryegrass, little bluestem, lavender and a strip mine seed mix – were planted into 60 pods in the area to determine the four-year success of these plants in cover, abundance and photosynthetic efficiency by species and soil treatment. Also, a new revegetation experiment was initiated with trees near the Horn Run mining area. 

“The site where we’re working didn’t have any vegetative cover,” Kilgore explained. “Nothing has grown on it since the 70s. It’s been bare and eroding into the creek. We’re just trying to figure out how to best stabilize this stuff.” 

Grabowski, who works for the campus arboretum and cares for all of the trees on campus, discovered based on density and height, little bluestem and the stip mine seed mix showed the most growth, especially in plots containing lime or a combination of lime, straw and a fungus and plant combination called mycorrhizae. 

Grabowski, who majors in……, put the finishing touches on that experiment

Now he is working on the part of the project which involved planting woody plants to encourage deeper overburden stabilization and increased soil organic matter production. 

A woody plant is one that produces wood as its structural tissue, typically a tree or a shrub. Five of the top six species where planted for the experiment – black cherry, black locust, black oak, red maple and shagbark hickory.

“We wanted to create an experiment at the same spot with trees instead of just plants,” Kilgore said. “We wanted to use woody plants this time. The roots would probably grow deeper, rather than the grasses or non-woody plants that we used.”  

In November, 2022 50 tree seedlings from five native and locally-occurring species were installed within the space of the existing vegetation experiment. The trees will be monitored for the next 10 years for survival and growth.

“We selected the ones that appeared the most that we could get cheaply,” Grabowski saiud. “There were two different treatments used, controlled treatment and a lime and woodchip treatment. We’re going to monitor how these trees are going to grow in this overburdened soil and make recommendations.”

Grabowski presented his findings at the American Ecological Society meeting in Portland Oregon. There were 5,000-6,000 people in attendance. Of the dozen or so undergraduate students at the meeting, three were from Washington & Jefferson.

Grabowski feels his work on this project has helped him determine a path for his future. Working as an intern with the United States Forest Service this past summer served to heighten his interest in possibly becoming an ecological researcher. 

“I really enjoyed working and collecting data in the field,” he said. “My favorite part about working on this research was collecting the data and making graphs with the data. I loved making graphs because each graph told a different story about how each plant grew on each soil treatment.”  

For Kilgore, work on the project will continue as more and different students get involved.

“I have this propensity for recruiting first-year students to help upper level students,” he said. “They become the mentors to these first and second-year students. Then they become interested.”  

Rama 

It’s very exciting to know he’s following his passion and this is a place for him to continue that path,” she said. “These are the types of projects that we are really excited by. When we find students who think about staying in STEM-related fields it’s exciting for us to continue to listen and learn to stories like this.”