Insights gained by science into the vast and sometime mysterious workings of the Australian landscape are helping the nation's miners develop a world lead in the restoration of damaged areas to their full function and beauty.

In a project funded through the Australian Centre for Minesite Rehabilitation Research and the Australian Minerals Industry Research Association, a group of scientists have developed indicators of the effectiveness of rehabilitation efforts.

What seemed impossible just a few years ago - to return a ruined landscape to something close to its pristine condition - is today becoming achievable due to a revolution in our understanding of how landscapes work.

Using 13 of Australia's most productive mines spread across the continent as case studies, Mr David Tongway and his fellow landscape ecologists from CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology have developed a way to judge how successful a minesite restoration really is.

And in the process, the minerals industry is giving birth to better ways to manage the nation's national parks, nature reserves and the rangelands.

"It's based on the understanding of how Australia's rangelands work, which we have built up over the last 20 or 30 years," Mr Tongway explains. "That has taught us a lot about how ecosystems work."

"The three basic questions are: how does a landscape function? What makes it fall apart? What can you do to rehabilitate it?"

By studying both pristine and damaged rangelands, the researchers have managed to distill the essence of a landscape - the vital factors, both alive and non-living - which make it work.

This involves understanding how water, topsoil, organic matter and nutrients are utilized within a landscape - and establishing whether these essential resources stay within the landscape or leak out of it, causing it to degrade.

It also involves an understanding of how the landscape copes with unpredictable stresses in the form of fire, flood, drought or grazing pressure - and whether it is resilient, or has been undermined so that it starts to fall apart.

The system developed by the team involves measuring 11 indicators on the soil surface at a range of sites, and building from these three basic indicators which tell them how resistant the land is to erosion, how effectively it retains and cycles nutrients and how it absorbs and stores water.

It also involves an understanding of the mix of species, both plant and animal, and in particular those which have a big impact on the landscape - termites or spinifex for example.

A key question in restoration is whether enough havens for wildlife have been provided by the developing ecosystem.

"Mine sites are very dynamic, in the sense that things happen very fast once you begin to restore them," Mr Tongway says.

"This in turn provides us with a speeded-up view of landscape processes, which is helping us develop better ways to look after areas which are not being mined, such as national parks and rangelands.

"In this way, what we are learning from mine restoration has an important role to play in helping look after our entire landscape."

Mr Tongway says that the scientific knowledge gained in Australia has worldwide application because it applies to many different kinds of ecosystems.

Demand for information about how Australia's scientists are developing indicators for a range of land uses is now coming from places as disparate as Iceland, South Africa and the United States.

The latest advances in restoring damaged landscapes are being discussed at a national conference hosted by the Minerals Council of Australia in Adelaide this week.

More information:
Mr David Tongway, CSIRO 041 922 8211
Dr Alan Kearns, CSIRO 02 6242 1783
David Salt, CSIRO 02 6242 1645