Restoration

Synonyms

Rehabilitation; Restoration

Definitions

• 1. “…the combined process of land treatment that minimizes water degradation, air pollution, damage to aquatic or wildlife habitat, flooding, erosion, and other adverse effects from surface mining operations…so that mined lands are reclaimed to a useable condition which is readily adaptable for alternative land uses and create no danger to public health or safety” (OMR 2015).

• 2. To make “........land capable of more intensive use by changing its general character, as by drainage of excessively wet land; irrigation of arid or semiarid land; or recovery of submerged land from seas, lakes and rivers” (EEA 2015).

Characteristics

Mining is one of the primary human activities responsible for disturbing land to an extent that reclamation is necessary. Disturbance is due to the extraction of near-surface deposits of metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources or from activities incidental to underground mining such as ore storage, ore processing,...