Reclamation
Reclamation, making land suitable for human use, usually through irrigation or drainage. The term is also used to refer to the restoration of land damaged by mining, erosion, or some other activity or process.
Since ancient times, people have increased the amount of land available to them for farming by irrigating areas with little or no rainfall and by draining marshes and other wetlands. In the 20th century, large-scale irrigation projects were carried out in a number of countries, including the United States, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union. In the United States, the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior has been responsible for developing and carrying out projects that provide water for irrigating large areas of arid and semiarid land in the Western states. A dramatic example of reclamation by drainage is the project begun by the Netherlands in 1920 to gain land from an inlet of the North Sea called the Zuider Zee. The project required building a huge dam across the inlet, forming a lake called the IJsselmeer.
The U.S. Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 requires mining companies to restore land that is strip-mined for coal. This restoration generally involves filling in excavations made to reach the coal, grading the land to avoid leaving steep slopes, placing the original topsoil on the graded surface, and planting the topsoil with vegetation.