Assessment of the sequestration capacity of vegetation by remote sensing methods in areas of reclaimed mining dumps

The study aims at estimation and mapping the amount of carbon allocated in above ground biomass of wood and in organo-mineral soil horizon at sites where reclamation and spontaneous succession took place on spoil heaps after coal mining. Several categories of data have been used to meet the objectives, namely ground field measurements, laboratory analyses of soil samples, airborne hyperspectral data from VNIR region, and airborne LiDAR scanning data. The digital imagery analysis, GIS modeling and multivariation statistical methods were applied in data assessment. The results show that there is a 7 600 tons of carbon allocated in above ground wood biomass in the area of 209 ha, and 8 100?12 200 tons in the soil A horizon in the region of the same size. The results proofed: 1/ statistically significant negative relationships (p < 0,01) between slope and amount of soil carbon, where higher negative correlation was for broad leaved species; 2/ statistically significant difference (p < 0,05) between amount of soil carbon under broad leaved and needle classes and under different species, the highest between soils under Alnus sp. and Pinus sp.; 3/ statistically significant relationships (p < 0,05) between the amount of carbon allocated in the aboveground wood biomass and that in the soil A horizon under the needle leaved class and under the spontaneous wood vegetation