About

The study of ecosystems provides a valuable framework for analyzing and acting on the linkages between people and the environment, and can be defined as dynamic complexes of plant, animal, microorganism communities, and the non-living environment, interacting as a functional and coherent unit.

Ecosystems impacted by mining in general, and by coal mining in particular, are difficult to restore. This is possible to a certain structural and functional level, but compared to their original or natural state, ultimately, a loss of capacity to provide benefits to society such as supply, regulation and purification of water, fresh air, floodwater retention, habitat function, biodiversity etc., may happen.

In recent literature, the links between ecosystems and the economy are often described using the innovative concept of ‘ecosystem services’, or flows of value to human societies as a result of the state and quantity of natural capital.

They can also be defined as the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, and are usually classified in three groups: provisioning services, regulating and maintenance services, and cultural services, according to the Common international classification of ecosystem services (CICES) V5.1.

Ecosystem services do add an important dimension to express the level of land rehabilitation and ecological restoration, which is very important from a societal point of view, by considering the ability of ecosystems to deliver multiple ecosystem services.

The ecosystem services concept involves an important dimension to current best-practices in the land rehabilitation and ecological restoration of coal mining-affected areas by providing ecosystem-relevant indicators to assess the level of restoration especially from a holistic landscape and societal perspective.

This is very important, considering the ability of ecosystems to deliver multiple ecosystem services, to improve socio-economic outcomes, and to catalyse the development of new jobs.

Thus, a valuation of the ecosystem services provided by different land rehabilitation and ecological restoration scenarios must be undertaken in order to assess their contribution to human well-being, to understand the incentives that individual decision-makers face in managing ecosystems in different ways, and to evaluate the consequences of alternative courses of action.

The importance of using scenarios in ecosystem services assessments is beginning to be realized, as early assessments presented a static picture in a changing world.

The necessity of providing counter-facts is now being demanded in conservation research and will become the norm in ecosystem services research as well.

The generation of different con- and diverging scenarios is particularly important for monetary valuation, since scenarios enable analysis of changes in services delivery which are required for quantifying trade-offs among them.

RECOVERY will use the ecosystem services concept to fill the gap between the ecosystem science and the practical application of this knowledge in policy and decision-making within the land rehabilitation and ecological restoration of coal mining-affected areas, linking socio-economic systems with ecosystems via the flow of ecosystem services, as a part of an integrated framework.

It will demonstrate approaches and best practices for analyzing land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions. An integrated assessment of multiple ecosystem services based on coal mining-affected scenarios will optimally allow policy and decision-makers to identify optimal alternatives and devise suitable strategies.

In essence, RECOVERY will give guidance for policy and decision-makers to select the land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions which deliver the greatest benefits relative to their investment and maintenance costs.

RECOVERY will enhance the delivery of EU policies by the coal mining industry, addressing specifically waste management, climate and energy, and biodiversity polices.

Related with the waste management policy, the Best Available Techniques (BAT) reference document for the management of waste from the extractive industries, in accordance with Directive 2006/21/EC, establishes fundamental criteria for closure processes, which not necessary occur simultaneously with the closure of a mine (MWEI BREF).

Among these criteria, three will be specifically addressed by RECOVERY: (a) the biological environment is restored to a natural, balanced ecosystem typical of the area, or is left in such a state so as to encourage and enable the natural rehabilitation and/or reintroduction of a biologically diverse, stable environment; (b) closure optimizes the opportunities for restoring the land and the upgrade of land use is considered whenever appropriate and/or economically feasible; and (c) rehabilitation is such that the ultimate land use is optimized and is compatible with the surrounding area and the requirements of the local community.

On the other hand, on 3 May 2011 the European Commission adopted the “2020 Biodiversity Strategy”  to halt the loss of biodiversity and improve the state of Europe’s species, habitats, ecosystems and the services they provide over the next decade, while stepping up the EU’s contribution to averting global biodiversity loss. It focuses on six major targets to address the main pressures on nature and ecosystem services in the EU and beyond, and lays down the policy foundations for EU-level action.

In addition to halting the loss of biodiversity, the new strategy also highlights in its second target, for the first time, the immense value of “ecosystem services” and the urgent need to maintain and restore these for the benefit of both nature and society.

Finally, on 20 July 2016 the European Commission presented a legislative proposal to integrate greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land use, land use-change and forestry into the 2030 climate and energy framework.

The proposal sets a binding commitment for each Member State to ensure that accounted emissions from land use are entirely compensated by an equivalent removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere, what is known as the “no debit rule”, enshrining the commitment in EU law for the period 2021-2030.

The level of innovative value delivered by RECOVERY is based on the following aspects:

1. It is the first comprehensive attempt at a European/worldwide scale to link the fields of land rehabilitation and ecological restoration with the ecosystem services concept in underground and opencast coal mining-affected areas.
2. It will give guidance for policy and decision-makers in order to select the land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions which deliver the greatest benefits relative to their costs, identifying optimal alternatives and devising suitable strategies.
3. It will increase the impact of land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions on both society and environment by demonstrating the opportunities that coal mining sites have to improve overall public welfare, and giving information on the environmental and social cost-effectiveness of these actions.
4. It will enhance simultaneously the delivery of the following EU policies by the coal mining industry: waste management policy (Directive 2006/21/EC), climate and energy policies (COM/2016/0479 final), and biodiversity policy (COM/2011/244).

The expected benefits for the European coal sector will be:

1. Delivering a blueprint instrument/indicator for both coal mining impact assessment and post-mining landscape (e)valuation: a feasible ex-ante impact assessment planning instrument to make recommendations for future planning and development of post-mining landscapes.
2. Delivering detailed costs of alternative land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions, as well as the benefits in the provision of ecosystem services, addressing specifically coal mining-affected areas.
3. Delivering a first set of suitable indicators that will allow a proper quantification of ecosystem services involved in coal mining-affected areas.
4. Delivering feasible valuation techniques as well as optimal discount rates for ecosystem services in coal mining-affected areas.
5. Delivering aninnovative framework for land rehabilitation and ecological restoration of coal mining-affected areas, conceived as “Best practice guidelines” aiming to accelerate the recovery of these degraded and transformed ecosystems to a good ecosystem status.
6. Developing artificial substitutes for soils suitable to several types of plant communities that provide a wide range of ecosystem services, addressing ‘difficult terrains’ in coal mining waste heaps.
7. Proposing suitable land rehabilitation techniques that allow successful environmental and vegetal developments in coal mining waste heaps.

Standardization will be achieved in RECOVERY by means of the following measures:

1. The implementation plan follows the “Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services” (MAES, 2013), which the objective is to support the development of a coherent analytical framework to be applied by the EU and its Member States in order to ensure consistent approaches.
2. It will use CORINE Land Cover classes (CLC, 2012 and 2016 where available) for developing the baseline mapping of relevant ecosystems, although doing detailed field mapping of the selected study areas at a higher resolution. The land cover project is part of the CORINE programme, developed by the European Environment Agency.
3. It will use the hierarchical structure of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES, 2018) for the assessment of ecosystem services, which was developed by the European Environment Agency, and is proposed to be used to ensure that cross-reference can be made.
4. It will use the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB, 2010) taxonomy, that is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and supported by the European Commission, when applicable and feasible, in order to tackle the challenges of this valuation process.

 An active underground coal mine property of Tauron Wydobycie S.A. (TWD), industrial partner of RECOVERY, that operates from the beginning of the twentieth century. Restoration has already started in the Libiąż waste heap, being one of the biggest objects of this kind in the eastern part of Silesian Coal Basin.

At present the wastes stored on the heap cover an area of 80 hectares, reaching 35 m of height. It is also a good “field laboratory” for assessing land rehabilitation techniques due to the intensive erosion on the slopes and also due to the high acidic character of wastes.

A closed underground coal mine property of Hulleras del Norte S.A. (HUNOSA), industrial partner of RECOVERY, that is undertaking nowadays its partial restoration.

Restoration activities have started with the refurbishment of the waste heaps area, which is divided in four sectors: Sector one has already been restored; Sector two is undergoing restoration; Sector four is being re-mined for recovering coal; and Sector three is being used to store wastes from coal re-mining of Sector four.

The company is also focusing on a new waste heap as Sector three is not big enough to store all the wastes produced by Sector four’s re-mining. Wastes heaps cover an area of 67 hectares, reaching 45 m of height.

No restoration or rehabilitation has yet been initiated with the rest of the facilities and terrains of Figaredo Mine, being a good opportunity to propose interesting revitalization operations.

 The complex includes dumps of Ema, Terezie and Bezruč coal mines in Ostrava city. The spoil deposition was started in the middle of 19^th century and ended in the 1980s (Terezie, Bezruč) or in 1976 (Ema).

The complex consists of three different units: the conical, thermally active mine dump of the Ema mine, the tableland dump of the Teresa mine and the tableland ring dump of the Bezruč mine, which surrounds the whole complex.

Between 1979 and 1995, almost the entire complex was reclaimed for forestry, with the exception of the dump Ema cone, the northern part of dump Terezie and part of the area in the west of the complex. At present 80% of the area is created by forest vegetation.

The complex is very diverse in terms of habitats, it contains thermophilous vegetation of thermally active parts of the Ema dump and hygrophilous vegetation on foots of slopes. It is also widely used as a tourist destination.

A restoration project that was developed by Palivový Kombinát Ústí, státní podnik (PKU), industrial partner of RECOVERY, in an opencast lignite mine.

In Chabařovice area, and after nine years of hydric rehabilitation, an artificial water reservoir has been completed with an area of 252 ha. In 2015 this water reservoir has been named Milada and opened to public and currently serves for sport and recreation activities.

The project started in 1997 when mining operation was ceased. Until the year 2000, reclamation activities of 15 Mm³ of overburden in order to stabilize an inside mining area heap were carried out, followed by tamping of coal seam, landing up bottom of the pit to prevent mashes and coal fires and securing the impermeability of the pit bottom for future water reservoir.

Rehabilitation activities included land shaping, dewatering, building of access roads and biological rehabilitation (forests and grassland areas).

Another restoration project that was developed by Palivový Kombinát Ústí, státní podnik (PKU), industrial partner of RECOVERY, also in an opencast lignite mine. The former Mine Most-Ležáky (Lake Most) has similar history as the Chabařovice Mine.

In 1999, brown coal mining was terminated and the hydric reclamation started by flooding the mine pit with water from the Ohře river in 2008. The ongoing revitalization works will be completed in 2019. The water reservoir is 292.92 ha, the capacity is 69 Mm³ and the maximum depth is 75 m.

After 1990 three inactive opencast lignite mines, that are one of the largest open cut lignite mining areas in Europe, were subject to rehabilitation and revitalization efforts by both the mining company and the regional planning authority.

The extensive and dynamic landscape changes will be studied, using an ecosystem services approach to assess the impacts of mining activity over a 100-year period, spanning pre- and post-mining states. Historical land use data from maps will be recorded, and several future potential land use scenarios will be outlined based on current planning documents.

The results will show the potential of providing ecosystem services support for the prioritization of preference areas in regional planning.

This is the work package in which all the coordination tasks are included: overall technical coordination of the project; organisation and management of meetings; distribution of technical data and information among partners; preparation of minutes and integration of reports; and administrative issues, including relations with the European Commission. This work package will also cover the design, implementation & maintenance of the project website.

This work package will focus on mapping and assessing the ecosystems and their services of the project’s case-studies:

• Identifying the adequate boundaries for the case-studies areas: the surrounding limits of the different coal mining-affected areas will be defined on the basis of existing spatial connectivity and functional cohesion. It is critical for establishing an ecosystem services context to determine with accuracy the adequate but flexible boundaries of the area where the impact of the planned activities may produce changes in forms of land use, monetary value of properties, and potential of ecosystem services.

• Mapping and assessment of relevant ecosystem services: CORINE land cover classes will be used to delineate, categorize and map the different ecosystems types of land cover in the study areas, although doing detailed field mapping at a higher resolution. The hierarchical structure of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) V5.1 will be used to assess the ecosystem services, in order to achieve standardization and to avoid any overlapping or redundancy within the different categories.

A GIS web interface will be provided for each case-study. These will be created using an open source Geographic Information System (GIS) such as QGIS or SAGA, where different layers will be considered, such as topographical maps and Digital Terrain Models (DTM), spatial point or line entities like water sources and rivers, and relevant land covers. A Graphical User Interface will allow to construct user desired information thematic maps for viewing purposes. All the layers will be accessible in the web as user selectable layers.

The importance of using scenarios in ecosystem services assessments is beginning to be realized, as early assessments presented a static picture in a changing world. The necessity of providing counter-facts is now being demanded in conservation research and will become the norm in ecosystem services research as well.

The generation of different con- and diverging scenarios based on alternative land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions is particularly important for monetary valuation, since scenarios enable analysis of changes in services delivery which are required for quantifying trade-offs among them.

The first step will be to develop, for the Mibrag Mines case-study, a feasible ex-ante impact assessment planning instrument: an integrated and functional assessment of landscape and land-use changes caused by coal mining, as there is yet no state-of-the-art or blueprint instrument/indicator set for both mining impact assessment and post-mining landscape (e)valuation.

The ecosystem services concept will be applied to assess the pre-mining rural landscape, prevailing restoration activities and different future scenarios for the modified landscape. The extensive and dynamic landscape changes will be studied, using an ecosystem services approach to assess the impacts of mining activity over a 100-year period, spanning pre- and post-mining states. Historical land use data from maps will be recorded, and several future potential land use scenarios will be outlined based on current planning documents. The results will show the potential to provide ecosystem services support for the prioritization of preference areas in regional planning.

>For example, forested and heterogeneous habitats are predicted to enhance future urban development and mitigation of future climate change, a goal of the Saxon government. In contrast, if future development priorities are on local food production and bio-energy use, more arable and grassland areas should be pursued. The use of freely and publicly available data and the simple methods of the intended approach can be used to inform and improve regional landscape planning.

Secondly, RECOVERY will test different techniques to enhance land rehabilitation of mining-affected areas in the case of ‘difficult terrains’ (coal mining waste heaps with intensive eroded slopes and high acidic character), attempting to develop artificial substitutes for soils suitable to several types of plant communities that deliver a wide range of ecosystem services.

Several blends consisting of rock wastes and fine-grained wastes, fly ashes and sewage sludge will be tested as substrate for different plant communities and test polygons will be created in real conditions of a big, acidified and exposed to erosion waste heap of Libiąż, property of Janina Mine (TWD).

Also, RECOVERY will analyse the soil composition, runoff water characteristics and degree of vegetal development of restored waste heaps, as they represent the main parameters in order to determine which rehabilitation practices allow successful environmental and vegetal developments.

The next step will be to formulate alternative land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions for the case-studies (but for Mibrag Mine) in order to generate different scenarios. Special emphasis will be given to consultation of scenarios with stakeholders (local authorities, neighbourhood associations, coal mining industry, trade unions and environmental NGOs), in order to guarantee the success of the whole process.

Taking into account the need to improve socio-economic outcomes and to catalyse the development of new – if possible green – jobs, different types of actions will be proposed, e.g.:

1. Recolonization of the site by local vegetation.
2. Commercial forestry plantations and secondary forests using local plant species.
3. Development for agriculture (arable land and pasture).
4. Installations for leisure and recreational purposes.
5. Space for wildlife and nature conservation including forms of ‘badland sites’.
6. Development of artificial water bodies, e.g. reservoirs, streams, cascades, etc.

Finally, the new ecosystem services provision of each generated scenario will be mapped and quantified, in order to enable the analysis of changes in services delivery which are required for quantifying trade-offs among them, and the GIS web interface will be expanded with this information.

Within RECOVERY, the energetic valorisation of mining wastes, the extraction of valuable substances, or its use in the process of obtaining crushed road and construction aggregates, natural aggregates, raw materials for the cement industry, void backfilling, etc., will not be considered, as these valorisation processes are previous to the development of any land rehabilitation and ecological restoration action.

First step of this work package will be to select suitable indicators that will allow a proper quantification of every ecosystem service involved in the coal mining-affected areas. Indicators of ecosystem services are scientific constructs that use quantitative data to measure ecosystems condition and human well-being. Properly constituted, indicators can convey relevant information for the whole process.

With this purpose, RECOVERY will take into account indicators developed in other studies and from the scientific literature, as well as developing new and specific indicators if appropriate.

Secondly, the selection of the best feasible valuation technique for every suitable indicator will be addressed by means of the Total Economic Value (TEV) concept, following the TEEB taxonomy when appropriate.

The concept of the TEV of ecosystems is defined as the sum of the values of all service flows that natural capital generates both now and in the future, appropriately discounted. TEV encompasses all components of (dis)utility derived from ecosystem services using a common unit of account: money or any market-based unit of measurement that allows comparisons of the benefits of various goods.

Since in our societies people are already familiar with money as a unit of account, expressing relative preferences in terms of money values will give useful information to RECOVERY’s purposes.

Within the TEV framework, values are derived, if available, from information of individual behaviour provided by market transactions relating directly to the ecosystem service. In the absence of such information, price information must be derived from parallel market transactions that are associated indirectly with the good to be valued, or by simulating a market and demand when no surrogate markets exist.

Finally, adequate discount rates for each case-study will be selected, as there are no purely economic guidelines for choosing it, and a variety of discount rates, including zero and negative rates, could be used, depending on the time period involved, the degree of uncertainty, the scope, and the country of the project.  

The objective of this work package is to develop a cost-benefit assessment of the different scenarios by quantifying the costs as well as the economic value of the ecosystem services provision, in order to determine which scenarios will deliver the greatest benefits in relation to their costs.

To achieve that goal, relevant market price data will be collected while determining when prices are distorted, in order to correct distortions by finding comparable products or services at undistorted prices in similar environments.

As HUNOSA, TWD and PKÚ are partners of RECOVERY, it will be possible to obtain detailed costs of their restoration processes and their maintenance costs, as well as quite good approximations of the costs of the alternative actions that were proposed, allowing precise cost-benefit calculations. The monetary values will be standardized to common spatial, temporal and currency units, namely Euros per hectare per year. This will make the information from all the case-studies comparable and accessible.

Then, the net present value (NPV) for every generated scenario will be estimated so that net economic consequences in the ecosystem services provision can be established. RECOVERY will also include uncertainty issues in the cost-benefit assessment in order to consider the limitations of valuation techniques in situations of radical uncertainty and to investigate the robustness of the whole process.

Finally, the best scenario for each considered case-study will be selected, highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages that were detected during the whole process.

This work package refers to the activities that will be undertaken to support the dissemination and transfer of the project’s knowledge and results to the whole European coal mining industry, policy makers and scientific community, ensuring a relevant impact on the competitiveness of the EU coal mining sector, and strengthening the environment policy-science interface at EU level.

For this purpose and from the lessons learned during the project, an innovative framework for land rehabilitation and ecological restoration of coal mining-affected areas will be developed, aiming to accelerate the recovery of degraded and transformed ecosystems to a good ecosystem status.

Conceived as ‘Best practice guidelines’ and addressing both practitioners and policy makers, the innovative framework will shift current land rehabilitation and ecosystem restoration actions to novel goals allowing an optimal planning/prioritizing of this task in coal mining-affected areas. Moreover, special emphasis will be focused on how these ‘Best practice guidelines’ enhance the delivery of EU waste management, climate, energy and biodiversity policies by the coal mining companies.

Finally, a specific workshop about the developments and results generated during the project, together with its policy enforcement measures, will be held in Katowice (Poland), as it is the place of the major coal mining companies within the European Union, and representatives from all coal mining companies, policy maker bodies and other stakeholders across Europe will be invited. The workshop will include a technical visit to Janina Mine’s Libiąż waste heap were the attendants will see the conducted techniques to develop artificial substitutes of soils for diverse plant communities in the case of ‘difficult terrains’ from coal mining waste heaps, and assess their effectiveness.