Article
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Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Landscape Evolution Modelling of a Post-mining Catchment for Long-term Simulations
Version 1
: Received: 14 June 2023 / Approved: 15 June 2023 / Online: 15 June 2023 (05:08:13 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Nair, D.; Evans, K.G.; Bellairs, S. Modelling of a Post-Mining Catchment for Future Simulations. Mining 2023, 3, 409-427. Nair, D.; Evans, K.G.; Bellairs, S. Modelling of a Post-Mining Catchment for Future Simulations. Mining 2023, 3, 409-427.
Abstract
Landform Evolution Modelling (LEM) provides an avenue for simulating how a landscape may evolve over extended time periods of thousands of years. The CAESAR-Lisflood LEM that includes a hydrologic model (TOPMODEL) and a hydraulic model (Lisflood) can be used to assess the proposed final landform morphology of a mine site by simulating how the mine landform and the landscape would evolve over a 1,000-year period. The accuracy of future simulations depends on the calibration and validation of the model to the past and present events. Calibration and validation of the model involves finding a combination of parameters of the model which when applied and simulated gives model outputs similar to those observed for the real site scenario for corresponding input data. Calibrating the sediment output of the CAESAR-Lisflood model at the catchment level and using it for studying the equilibrium conditions of the landform is an area yet to be explored. Therefore, the aim of this study was to calibrate the CAESAR-Lisflood model and then validate it. To achieve this, the model was run for a rainfall event with a set of parameters, plus discharge and sediment data for the input point of the catchment, to analyze how similar the model output would behave when compared with the discharge and sediment data for the output point of the catchment. The model parameters were then adjusted until the model closely approximate the real site values of the catchment. It was then validated by running the model for a different set of events and checking that the model gave similar results to the real site values. The outcomes demonstrated that while the model can be calibrated to a greater extent for hydrology (discharge output) throughout the year, the sediment output calibration may be slightly improved by having the ability to change parameters to take into account the seasonal vegetation growth during the start and end of the wet season. This study is important for designing and testing post-mining rehabilitated landscape systems that assess hydrology and sediment movement in seasonal biomes.
Keywords
Landform evolution modelling; catchment hydrology; post-mining landscape; sediment transport; mine rehabilitation
Subject
Engineering, Mining and Mineral Processing
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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