Erskine, PD, Fletcher, AT & Seaborn, B 2013, 'Opportunities and constraints of functional assessment of mined land rehabilitation', in M Tibbett, AB Fourie & C Digby (eds), Mine Closure 2013: Proceedings of the Eighth International Seminar on Mine Closure, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Cornwall, pp. 345-354, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1352_28_Erskine
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/1352_28_Erskine/)
Abstract: This paper presents a general overview of the functional attributes of rehabilitated open-cut coal mine lands. It provides an evaluation of how classical soil analysis techniques and landscape function analysis (LFA) have been applied to ecosystems on heavily modified mined landscapes. It also compares the landscape position and placement of LFA transects to high-resolution imagery captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle. LFA was originally developed as a method for assessing soil surface conditions in the rangelands of Australia and has since been applied in other countries, ecosystems and, more recently, mine sites. The method uses quickly observed soil surface features to estimate the status of three important soil functional processes (particularly stability, infiltration and nutrient cycling), which have been proposed as indicators of ecosystem rehabilitation success. For mine site rehabilitation, LFA index scores are typically interpreted as trends over time and compared with unmined reference communities. This paper suggests that LFA transects and the LFA-generated scores do not adequately reflect the functional success of rehabilitated coal mine lands. The utility of these monitoring methods in constructed landscapes should be critically examined before future application.