World Environment Day is an international day of awareness that engages citizens, businesses, and governments to turn their attention to pressing environmental issues. It is a day that recognises environmental action from a global perspective.
For World Environment Day, we thought we’d do our part and share some of our environmental-based projects, from ‘Natural Capital Accounting’ to ‘Transitions and Climate Change’; environmental awareness and rehabilitation play a pivotal role in our research.
- Project 2.7 Natural Capital Accounting – This project will build support for and assist in facilitating the implementation of natural capital accounting systems by mining enterprises in monitoring and managing the sustainable use of natural capital and the impact of mining activities on environmental assets.
- Project 3.4 Returning Ecosystem Resilience – This project will establish a platform to effectively organise the CRC’s knowledge base and then deliver a conceptual ecosystem return model highlighting the CRC’s collective capabilities to address prioritised knowledge gaps and industry needs.
- Project 3.8 Increasing bio-available plant nutrients in mineral waste – This project will formulate a process to increase plant-available nutrient levels, specifically nitrogen for this study, in waste rock, tailings and stockpiled soils (subsoils and topsoil) using novel plant-microbe systems to improve the rehabilitation post-mining.
- Project 3.9 Climate change, vegetation & risk for rehabilitation success – The objective of this study is to investigate the possible consequences of climate change on the performance of vegetation on soil covers in a representative Latrobe Valley mine rehabilitation environment and the impact it may have on long-term landform stability of soil covers.
- Project 3.13 Australian Seed Scaling Initiative – This Australian Seed Scaling Initiative has a core focus on increasing the efficiency of seed performance in ecosystem rehabilitation for mined and agricultural landscapes and is paramount to ensure positive restoration outcomes.
Project 4.1 Dynamically transforming environmental assessment through a shared analytics framework – A Shared Analytic Framework for the Environment (SAFE) is being developed by The Western Australia Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI) and the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE). This framework aims to provide a structured way to plan and align the data capabilities required for environmental analysis and assessments.- Project 4.2 Mine Rehabilitation Trials Online (MRTO) – The project aim is to co-develop a framework that could underpin interoperable knowledge systems to provide CRC TiME partners, and the broader mine rehabilitation industry platforms for sharing data, information and knowledge on mine closure planning and practices.
- Project 4.6 Evidence for effective climate-adapted seed-sourcing strategies – This project will provide evidence for climate-adapted seed-sourcing strategies through experiments at four mine sites. These experiments will enable direct comparisons of local vs alternative climate-adapted seed-sourcing approaches.
- 5.3 Transitions and Climate Change – This project is to capture how climate responses (adaptation and mitigation) may impact the economic, social and environmental transformations in mining regions in order to assist the prioritisation of investment through the CRC.
Long-term rehabilitation is the most common objective for post-mine closure land use. However, there are often circumstances where lands can be used for other benefits, including for broader conservation as well as tourism, community development and economic purposes. To access all of our project information, click here.