Spatial assessment of open cut coal mining progressive rehabilitation to support the monitoring of rehabilitation liabilities

Worldwide coal mining has expanded over the past few decades, though growth has recently slowed due to reduced demand, partly due to concerns around CO2 emissions and climate change impacts. Coal mining is also a significant driver of land disturbance in regions where economic coal seams and coal mining methods are applied, in particular open cut extraction. To address these impacts, mined landscapes are rehabilitated with the aim of making them safe, stable, non-polluting and self-sustainable to an agreed post-mining land use such as agriculture or conservation. Progressive rehabilitation is often conducted to keep the footprint of disturbance to a minimum and to ensure that ecological and/or agricultural land use production is restored as soon as possible in preference to waiting until after mine closure. Environmental regulators require methods for tracking the performance of mining companies engaging in progressive rehabilitation to evaluate the success or otherwise of their regulatory frameworks and to ensure companies meet the requirements of their environmental authorities or mining licenses.