On June 20 2019 the IEC offered an field trip, organized by the Research Institute for Lignite (Vúhu), to Most (CZ) with the topic “recultivation of the coal mining area next to most”. German and czech students had the chance to experience the possibilities of recultivation first hand.

The field trip startet at the lake near Most, which is the biggest hydrorecultivated area in Czech Republik. It’s going to be a local recreation area. The amount of water in the lake gets adjusted with pipes, pumps and the water from a river 40km away. Pretty impressive performance!

But the human help is not even crucial: In some areas some plants and trees were strong enough  to grow and expand on their own. Even though the soil is pretty arid there. But this field trip was not only sight seeing! At the spoil heap Střimice the methods of taking soil samples and using that and other aspects for the developement of the best fitting recultivation programme were worked out by the whole group.

The new students’ expertise was used at the last stop: the opencast mine Vršany. This area will be completely recultivated within the next 40 years. Although the schedule for the recultivation is already made, the students discussed about the different opportunities for this territory.

Overall it was a very enlightening field trip for most of the students, who may haven’t seen all these different levels of recultivation yet!