The urgent environmental problem of industrial Kryvbas is the reduction of dust formation from wind erosion of bare surfaces, especially slopes, dumps of iron ore mines and quarries. The best way to reduce the dusting of dumps is to afforest their surface with trees and bushes, but naturally this process can take up to 15-20 years, and the well-known scientific developments to solve this problem are ineffective or too time-consuming. The objective of our work is to create the innovative technology for active stimulation of self-organized vegetation of hard-to-reach steep slopes of dumps. To implement the idea, it is proposed to use standard hydroseeders for a new purpose, in particular, HM-0-HARV Turbo Turf hydroseeder, which is able to create hydroflow at a distance of 30-50 m. The article describes in detail the essence of the developed technology, method of organizing and conducting hydraulic sowing from both the lower and upper edge of the dumps. It is recommended to include seeds of herbaceous grass and legumes, deciduous trees and shrubs, mineral fertilizers and nutrient substrate (sewage sludge) in the seeding hydraulic mixture. The proportion of seeds of various plant species, fertilizers and nutrient substrate in the hydraulic mixture for sowing on the slopes of Kryvyi Rih dumps, which have a neutral soil acidity and contain at least 3% of the fine fraction of rocks in the surface structure, is substantiated. According to the results of testing the proposed technology, it is concluded that applying a mixture of seeds of herbaceous plants, trees and shrubs in combination with mineral fertilizers and nutrient substrate to the surface of dump slopes by hydroflow accelerates their self-organized vegetation by about 3-4 times. It is shown that crop care measures in the first year of plant vegetation (periodic watering and, if necessary, fertilizing using hydroseeder) can save up to 60-75% of seedlings and help stabilize newly created biogeocenosis in subsequent years.

Iron ore mining is followed by significant disturbances of the earth’s surface caused by both iron ore mining facilities (underground mines and open pits) and disposal of mining and concentration wastes on the surface (waste and substandard ore dumps at underground mines, overburden and oxidized rock dumps at open pits, tailings storage facilities at mining and beneficiation plants). In addition, operation of mining enterprises leads to creating hundreds of kilometers of above-ground pipelines, technological roads and railroads; drilling and blasting operations at underground mines and open pits lead to seismic phenomena and geotectonic disturbances of the surface in the form of sinkholes and craters in places of underground workings. The presented scientific work aims to generalize the practice of measures to optimize landscape disturbances caused by mining and develop individual issues of arrangement and technology of reclamation of disturbed surface areas in conditions of Kryvyi Rih iron ore basin. Technogenic surface disturbances accumulated during the period of economic exploitation of the region require a comprehensive solution in two directions. The first one consists in reducing the rate of new destructive impacts on the state of the relief by switching from extensive methods of deposit exploitation to all-round intensification of production (introduction of low-waste technologies, concentration waste re-treatment, oxidized ores processing, transition to technologies of internal dumping). The second one involves optimization of already formed landscape disturbances through reclamation. It is recommended to implement a number of methods of improving individual technogenic landscape formations by engineering and biological methods.

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