ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION OF QUARRY WORKINGS ON MINING OF BUILDING MATERIALS STAVROPOL UPLAND
The rate on mining of minerals (building stone, shell rock, gravel, clay, sand, etc.) of open (quarry) way in the central Ciscaucasia do not weaken. Like other natural resources is a profitable business that assumes continued intensification of this extractive industries. On the other hand, measures laid down in the original projects on carrying out remediation works shall remain almost unfulfilled. The consequence of this is the growth area of disturbed land in the zone of chernozems and chestnut soils that were previously highly productive. Abandoned quarry became characteristic elements of the agricultural landscape in the region. Only in the Stavropol region, these territories occupied more than 30 thousand hectares. The components of damage of nature and economy are: 1) appearance among arable land, pastures and hayfields of alien technological areas; 2) loss of land users of the potential benefits; 3) creating of permanent centers of mass congestion of hazardous for environmental arable land and forage land weed-donors; 4) violation of the hydrological and salt regime on adjacent to them lands; 5) the negative social and psychological impact on the working population. Traditional recommendations for biological reclamation of fulfilled quarries envisage the use of conventional agricultural methods (planting annual crops or mixtures of perennial forage grasses), among which protective functions lasted no more than one to four (five) years. Research has shown the real possibility of creation on technological and "worthless" lands of analogues of natural vegetation - steppes, meadows and similar multi-species, self-sustaining, indefinitely of many years, ecological and cost effective ecosystem - agro steppes.