I’m on my way to Sierra Leone to work with One Sky, a BC-based non-profit, on a land reclamation project in the Kono district. Funding for my portion of the research was provided by Accelerate BC; here is an excerpt from the proposal, which details the work to be done in the next two months.

Proposal

1.     Background information

From 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone underwent a civil war that resulted in excess of 200,000 deaths and the displacement of over 2 million individuals. Funding this war was the illegal extraction and sale of diamonds, now called ‘blood diamonds’ or ‘conflict diamonds’. The extraction of these diamonds from small-scale artisanal mines, largely in the Kono district, left a ravaged landscape, and much former agricultural land unusable. While most artisanal mining ended along with the war, the abandoned open pits still exist, breeding malarial mosquitos, contaminating local water sources with residual heavy metals, and preventing the (re)-establishment of biota (FESS (a) 2007).

In 2006, One Sky: Canadian Institute of Sustainable Living of Smithers, BC, started a land remediation project at Bandafayie, in the Kono district. The remediation work at this site is nearly complete, and three new sites within the district have been added: Woama, Kainsay and Simbakora. At this critical stage, when land management plans are being considered for Bandafayie, and lessons learned will be applied to the remediation of the new sites, One Sky has alloted resources to undertake an environmental health survey of all four sites. This survey will reveal valuable information on the ecological health of each area, to be considered in land management planning, and will also provide baseline data for long-term monitoring of the sites.

2.     Research project proposal

Research Objectives

The environmental health of ex-artisanal mining sites in the Kono district of Sierra Leone will be assessed using soil quality, water quality and plant biodiversity as key indicators. The results of this assessment will give direction to One Sky’s development of land management plans for the area. In order to provide context to the survey and measurements, a control site will be set up at Kangari Hills Forest Reserve, located 50 km east of Kono. The Kangari Hills Reserve is the closest area to Kono left relatively undisturbed during the war, and contains sections of lowland gallery forest similar to the Kono sites. The sampling of this control site has been graciously approved of by Daniel D. Siaffa at The Conservation Society of Sierra Leone.

Physical Survey

The condition of each site at project commencement will be recorded via written, photographic, and video documentation. Next, the sites will each be digitally mapped by combining aerial photographs (from UNEP), satellite imagery (Google Earth), and topographical maps; these will be combined and rasterized using open-source CAD software.

A digital square-frame grid will be created for each site, with quadrats being 1m square. Sampling methods below are based on the recommendations in David Hill’s Handbook of Biodiversity Methods (2005).

Soil Sampling

7 (digital) quadrats at each site will be selected by applying a random number table to the digital map; a uniform point within each quadrat will then be identified via GPS and used as the sampling site. 2 soil samples will be gathered from each point, for each major indicator (N-P-K and pH) at all sites (including the control site), for a total of 280 soil samples.

The soil samples will be tested for levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as well as acidity/alkalinity (pH). These indicators were chosen because of the likelihood that the land will be used agriculturally by the community post-remediation (FESS (b) 2007). The N-P-K tests will be conducted using Palintest Soiltester blocks, which will allow the accurate testing of major soil nutrient levels to be conducted in the field.

Water Sampling

Digital quadrats containing open pits or standing water will be identified, and using the application of a random number table, 4 quadrats at each site will be selected for testing. 2 water samples from each quadrat will be gathered for each water quality indicator at each site. Levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, phosphates, nitrates, phenols and dissolved salts will be tested for using Palintest reagent tablets and comparator discs. A total of 280 water samples will be taken (including control site), testing for 7 indicators of water quality.

Measurement of Biodiversity

Using flora as an indicator of biodiversity, 8 quadrats from the digital map of each site will be chosen using a random number table. These quadrats will then be physically laid out at each site. Within each randomly chosen quadrat, the botanical diversity will be catalogued at the species level. Where identification of plant species is not possible, family will be used. If family is not identifiable, the plant will be noted as ‘unknown’ within the survey. Photo and/or video documentation will be appended for each taxon. The survey will be conducted twice: once at the beginning of April (the end of dry season), and once at the end of May (beginning of rainy season). Thus 40 quadrats (8 per site, including control) will each be twice surveyed for floral biodiversity. The object of cataloguing the biodiversity of each site is to provide baseline insight into the ecological health of the landscape (Hill 2005).

Environmental Impact Assessment of Proposed Remediation Strategies

One of the major objectives of conducting the environmental health assessments at the Kono sites is the collection of data for use in the creation of land remediation plans for each site. The major tool that will be used in the analysis and comparison of potential remediation plans is the Leopold Matrix. A Leopold Matrix is a tool that allows the graphical representation of the potential impacts of remediation activities upon a list of environmental criteria (Rogers et al. 2008); discussion of possible mitigation strategies for negative effects will also be addressed. Potential remediation options to be assessed for the purposes of agriculture include phytoremediation and mycoremediation (FESS (b) 2007); non-agricultural options will also be assessed if requested by the community.  The results will be used by One Sky and stakeholders in future remediation and land management decision-making processes.

References

(FESS (a)) Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability. (2007). Reclaiming the Land After Mining.

Retrieved 09/03/09: http://www.fess-global.org/files/Reclaiming_the_Land_After_Mining.pdf

(FESS (b)) Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability. (2007). Consultative Workshop on Land Reclamation and Alternative Land Use. Retrieved 09/03/09: http://www.fess-global.org/files/FESS_Koidu_Workshop_Report.pdf

Hill, David. (2005). Handbook of Biodiversity Methods: Survey, Evaluation and Monitoring. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rogers, Peter P., Kazi F. Jalal & John A. Boyd. (2008). An Introduction to Sustainable Development. London, UK: Earthscan.

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