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Synopsis With the growing increase in development of industrial sector, more and more forest lands are being brought under mining operation. These results in drastic changes in land use patterns. The major deleterious impacts on ecosystems are on land degradation, microbial population, ecology and vegetation, waste discharge, pollution of water and air, wildlife and its habitat, health and safety of workers etc.

There is a need to develop site-specific restoration/reclamation techniques for long-term sustainability of degraded ecosystem and to maintain the homeostasis in the whole biosphere. Several useful and applied studies have been done by researchers, scientists of various research organizations, field foresters, environmentalists, academicians of universities, and many voluntary organizations on various aspects of rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems. The environmental protection laws/Acts of provide the protection and improvement of human environment and for matters connected have been framed as per the decisions taken at the UN Conference on Human Environment, held at Stockholm June, 1972.

The priority areas covered in this present compilation are status of land damages/ecosystem degradation, strategies of reclamation, waste management for potential use, technological development for minimizing degradation of ecosystem, ecological and biological changes brought about due to various reclamation activities, role of soil micro flora and fauna in rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems etc. The book would be of vital significance for policy makers, researchers, foresters, industrialists, academicians and environmentalists and would be very purposeful for reclamation of mined lands, particularly of coalfields and sustainable management of degraded ecosystems as a whole.