Anglo American Mine Rehabilitation Monitoring
Challenge
Anglo American operates the Dawson, Capcoal, Grasstree, Aquila, Moranbah and Grosvenor mines in the Bowen Basin, approximately 180 km inland of the Queensland coast. Progressive rehabilitation is undertaken according to the rehabilitation plans for the respective operations. To date more than 10,000 hectares have been rehabilitated across the mine operations. Monitoring of this area is required to compare progress with established completion criteria. Conventional on-ground monitoring techniques over such a large area are cost prohibitive, involve risk to personnel, and any sampling is restricted to a very small proportion of the total area and within areas that are readily accessible.
Anglo American required a solution enabling them to monitor all rehabilitation across their multiple operations efficiently and access their data from a single platform.
Solution
Since 2018 Anglo American has engaged Ecoda to undertake rehabilitation monitoring using remote sensing analysis as part of an integrated monitoring program to determine how rehabilitation is progressing against completion criteria. Annual monitoring involves 4-band aerial imagery and LiDAR captured by manned aircraft and has expanded across all operations.
Aerial data is analysed by Ecoda to produce multiple metrics representative of established completion criteria over rehabilitated areas. These include landform geometry metrics (slope angles and height/length), landform stability (erosion gully cover, depth and width; ground cover including rock and bare earth), and vegetation (vegetation cover, health, height and grass cover). Results are provided on Anglo American’s customised Ecoda workspace for visualisation and producing analysis reports.
Outcome
Ecoda provides an easy way for mine managers to collaborate and plan, visualise and report on rehabilitation progress to regulators. Information is shared by Anglo American with external consultants for continuous improvement in rehabilitation plans and activities.
The use of Ecoda and remote sensing has resulted in improvements in efficiency, safety and accuracy for Anglo American’s mine rehabilitation monitoring program.
Gain insight from above
Contact us to see how earth observation data can power your project
