Reclamation Monitoring: The Critical Elements of a Reclamation Monitoring Program

The potential for serious environmental impacts resulting from large scale surface mining is proportional to the difficulty of reclaiming the
disturbed area . Reclamation monitoring programs are designed to measure the extent of environmental disturbance and the rate of recovery. This paper lays out a methodology for selecting, measuring, and interpreting critical elements of a reclamation monitoring program. The end land use is employed as a decision making key to identify the major factors affecting reclamation monitoring and to select the biophysical and economic characteristics requiring measurement . The latter portion of the paper explores the ways of optimizing the efficiency of monitoring programs. It outlines the relative advantages and weaknesses of several sampling designs commonly used in reclamation monitoring .