Evaluation of the comprehensive benefits of vegetation restoration of rare-earth tails in Xunwu County
- DOI
- 10.2991/icseee-16.2016.15How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Eucalyptus; rare-earth tails; analytic hierarchy process; evaluation
- Abstract
Rare earth elements (REE) are important mineral resource in China, especially in Jiangxi province, Inner Mongolia. There is abundance of tailings in the REE mining area, which is harmful for the ecosystem and environment. Eucalyptus is one kind of tree which has often been used in the in ecological restoration for the tailings field of the REE mining area in Jiangxi province. Taking REE mining area of Xunwu County in the south of Jiangxi province as a study region, the comprehensive benefits of ecosystem restoration in tailings field with eucalyptus was examined this paper for evaluating the achievements and defects of ecosystem restoration. Xunwu County is not only one of the most important REE mining areas in China, but also the first county in the head streams of Dongjiang river, one of three branches in Pearl river basin. This river's inflow is the water source for the domestic and industrial needs of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other cities. After detailed surveys and evaluations of experts, 26 main indexes were determined for appraising the comprehensive impacts of vegetation restoration with eucalyptus on the ecological environment in tailings field of the REE mining area in Xunwu County. Then the model for evaluating comprehensive benefits of vegetation restoration with eucalyptus was put forward for with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and fuzzy mathematics theory. Finally, according to the different assessments by several experts (two persons), local officials (four persons), scientists (three persons), farmers (eight persons) and entrepreneurs in REE industry (three persons), who were randomly selected, the comprehensive benefit of eucalyptus in tailings fields of the REE mining area was evaluated with the above model. It was generally shown in this research that during the ecosystem restoration with eucalyptus in tailings field of REE minerals, the ecological benefits and economic benefits were both general. The social benefits were good, and the comprehensive benefits were general. On the other hand, the overview assessment showed that, generally speaking, the comprehensive benefits of eucalyptus were thought as excellent, good, general, poor and bad by 17%, 28%, 30%, 21% and 4% of above surveyed in research, respectively. It was suggested in this article that the eucalyptus was useful for ecological restoration in the tailings field of REE minerals in Xunwu County, Jiangxi province. The social benefits of ecosystem restoration with eucalyptus in tailings field were good, which is higher than the ecological benefits and economic benefits. So there was something to be done to improve the ecological and economic benefits of ecological restoration with eucalyptus in the tailings field of REE minerals. The reasons behind the lacking of ecological and economic benefits in ecological restoration with eucalyptus were lacking of biodiversity, and a shortage of soil water in the tailings field of REE minerals. There should
- Copyright
- © 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Xianghui Lu AU - Anhua Tang AU - Jianmin Zhao PY - 2016/12 DA - 2016/12 TI - Evaluation of the comprehensive benefits of vegetation restoration of rare-earth tails in Xunwu County BT - Proceedings of the 2016 5th International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Environment Engineering (ICSEEE 2016) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 89 EP - 95 SN - 2352-5401 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/icseee-16.2016.15 DO - 10.2991/icseee-16.2016.15 ID - Lu2016/12 ER -