**1. Introduction**

Ecological restoration often known as eco-restoration is the process of recreating, initiating or accelerating the recovery of degraded habitats [1]. The adverse effect of disturbances include the full removal of vegetation cover and topsoil, which completely changes the topography of the area, deterioration of esthetics, impacts on surrounding ecosystems, and cause the major environmental changes

that alter both ecosystem structure and function [2]. These disturbances are the negative outcome of opencast mining. In pacifying the adverse impacts caused due to mining activity on the local environment, mining-degraded areas are either reclaimed, by restoring a neglected area to some use or rehabilitated, by providing circumstances for a new and considerably different use [3] in order to mitigate the negative effects of mining activities on the surrounding ecosystem. To achieve this, two restoration techniques are to be used namely physical, technical, or engineering restoration, which is high cost and accounts for 60 to 90% of the total restoration cost and biological restoration, which is low cost and requires multi-disciplinary inputs [4].

The normal recovery of mining-degraded sites takes time for plant and animal species to colonize [5–7]. However, in many degraded areas, conventional recovery practices combined with biological restoration through human involvement can speed up the restoration process [8, 9]. Until now, there has not been much focus on restoring these degraded lands. Recent awareness followed by stringent enforcement of rules and regulations has generated consciousness about the environment. In some places of India restoration has been tried on an experimental basis [10–13]; [8] through the introduction of plantation programs. Plantation of indigenous plant species has attempted restoration through such approaches and as a consequence, the degraded areas have been restored [14].

Restoration is the recreation of entire communities of organisms that are closely modeled on those occurring naturally, whereas reclamation is any purposeful effort to return a damaged ecosystem to some type of beneficial usage [15–17]. In several situations, it would appear that it is reclamation rather than restoration which is attempted. Restoration needs knowledge of indigenous biological resources for understanding the species response to micro-environmental features and edaphic conditions [18–20]. Information on these aspects aids not only in the selection of species that are adapted to local conditions [13] but also in the rapid recovery of the ecosystem once such species have been planted [21, 22]. In these conditions, this piece of research is the outcome of a study that encompassed all of the factors needed to aid in ecological restoration of disturbed areas at Jajang iron and manganese ore mine in Keonjhar district, Odisha.

The Jajang iron and manganese ore mine area in Keonjhar district, Odisha has been disturbed due to mining since 1957. The area with dry deciduous forests contains good quality minable iron and manganese ore deposits. To undertake the mining activities some parts of the forest covers were cleared. Presently dumping is being done in well-vegetated valleys that adversely affected the vegetation. Thus the present study aimed to fix a set of phytosociological and growth related parameters of plant species that are linked to species success, as well as an ecological framework for selecting suitable species from the nearby mining forest and plantation to restore the degraded areas of Jajang iron and manganese ore mine, Odisha.

### **2. Study area**

The Jajang Iron and Manganese Ore Mine (JIMOM) 21<sup>0</sup> 55/ 00// to 21<sup>0</sup> 56/ 35//N latitude and 85<sup>0</sup> 25/ 00// to 85<sup>0</sup> 27/ 10// E longitude having a lease area of about 666.15 ha include 247 ha of forest area and 41.97 ha of dump area (**Figures 1** and **2**).

In this area, mining has been done in 377.18 ha and 41.97 ha or nearly about 42 ha have been used as a dump. The rate of extraction of ore is around 16.5 million tons per annum (MTPA) and the ore to waste ratio is 1:0.043. The mines lease area includes the following:

*Ecological Restoration of Degraded Habitats of Jajang Iron and Manganese Ore Mines… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99584*

**Figure 1.** *Google earth view of Jajang iron and manganese ore mine at Keonjhar. ML: Mining lease.*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Outline map within 10 km radius of Jajanga iron and manganese ore mine at Keonjhar. RF: Reserve Forest, ML: Mining lease.*


**Figure 3.** *Forest area (FA) of JIMOM.*

**Figure 4.** *Dump area (DA) of JIMOM.*

Soil analytic report comprises of some physical and chemical parameters are used to validate the fertility and health status of soil in this area is presented in **Table 1**. Physical parameters (sand, silt and clay percentage) related to the development of soil structure indicated that the soil of the area is loamy with some proportions of silt and clay. The depth varies from shallow (0-30 cm) and medium (31–50 cm) to moderately deep (51-80 cm). Most areas have medium-depth soil. More than half of the area has moderate to good water holding capacity. Chemical parameters encompass pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and organic carbon mostly related to soil fertility inferred that the soil is slightly acidic and adequate in the required nutrient parameters (potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen) to afford plant growth [23].

*Ecological Restoration of Degraded Habitats of Jajang Iron and Manganese Ore Mines… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99584*

**Figure 5.** *Mining activity at JIMOM.*


#### **Table 1.**

*Soil physico -chemical characters (mean SD) of the study site.*
