Photo courtesy of Douglas Ramsey.
Unmanned Aerial Systems Monitor Mine Reclamation Success By Lynnette Harris and Douglas Ramsey
O
ften, the best way to see what’s
happening
on
the
ground is from the air, espe-
cially when the goal is to monitor the condition of large areas as they change over time.
A collaboration between Utah State
University’s Remote Sensing/GIS Lab and the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mines (DOGM) is developing an effective
landscape-monitoring tool to help land managers evaluate reclamation activities across the state.
The current test site is the Wilberg-
Cottonwood coal mine located near
Castle Dale, Utah, which has undergone reclamation activities to return the mine
14 Utah Science
site to natural conditions. It is PacifiCorp’s responsibility to do reclamation work at the
site, and the partnership has yielded important data and tested methods that can
be applied to monitoring and managing other disturbed sites.
Drones equipped with high-resolution
cameras capture images that are paired
with topographic data and allow the team to monitor changes where soils were
“pocked” by a trackhoe to produce thousands of micro-watersheds and support
new vegetation. The approximately 13,500 pocks in the reclaimed area slow water
as it moves downhill, curbing erosion and
trapping water which aids nearby plants. Over time, seeded vegetation will grow and
the pocks will fill with sediment, leaving the landscape in a semi-natural condition. The aerial images allow the DOGM to
monitor the landscape in detail which was not available to land managers in the past.
Scientists and land managers will be able to build on the aerial and ground-based
data to create a template for monitoring other reclamation sites.
Researchers involved in the project
are in USU’s Department of Wildland
Resources: Douglas Ramsey, professor and director of the Remote Sensing/GIS Laboratory; Christopher McGinty, associate professor and the lab’s associate
director; and graduate research assistant Christopher Brown. ¤
