**3.3 Compassion of sites**

Comparing both sites in terms of selected soil physicochemical properties (**Figure 3**), results showed that after 5 years of restoration the significantly higher exchangeable Ca and Mg were observed in the KHL catchments compared to HM. Similarly, significantly higher clay, silts and soil organic matter contents were observed in the former catchments compared to the latter. Higher silt:clay ratio in the KHL suggests that the soil PM are basically of younger age compared to that of the HM. An observation of the SSCR showed that higher values (i.e. 31.68) were observed in the HM compared to the KHL suggesting that the soils of the HM will have betterrooting volumes for the plants grown on it compared to the KHL. This was in agreement with the findings of Napoli et al. [46] and Olaleye et al. [47].
