Australian industries and land managers are required to restore and rehabilitate land that they have disturbed. However, these industries and government regulators lack Earth Observation (EO) tools to effectively characterise progressive rehabilitation of these disturbance footprints.

This project aims to engage the mining industry and land management agencies to develop a clear understanding of EO tools needed to improve government monitoring, and industry management approaches to mine rehabilitation and restoration at the property scale (including stochastic event monitoring). We know from recent discussions with multiple mining companies (e.g. BHP, Anglo, and Rio Tinto) that there is a compelling argument to link remotely sensed observations with rehabilitation success criteria.

This project includes a needs analysis based on industry and government engagement; a literature review on EO for rehabilitation monitoring and tool development; and the development of a roadmap that highlights current capabilities and recommendations for future research.