Mine rehabilitation hydrology, infiltration and runoff routing responses for Bowen Basin coal mines

Runoff properties for rehabilitated mines are needed for a number of purposes including sizing mine water holding dams, planning for erosion control and more general mitigation of downstream impacts. This paper reports analyses of rainfall simulator rainfall-runoff-erosion plot scale trials carried out as part of the Post-Mining Landscapes Project. This project examined mine spoils and soils for a number of mines in the Bowen Basin. The spoils and soils encompassed the range of soil and spoil types in existence in the Bowen Basin at the time of the project (mid-1990s). A rainfall–runoff model was fitted to these data sets. This model consisted of two components (1) a kinematic wave runoff-routing model to route the runoff to the catchment outlet, and (2) a generalised Philip infiltration model used to determine the runoff generated. Preliminary results from this analysis for one mine site were reported to this conference in 1996 (Willgoose et al, 1996). This paper will, for the first time, report the entire data set, and hydrologic analyses of this data set. It will also report the results of analyses of possible soil/spoil predictors (e.g. grading, soil texture) for hydrologic response using pedotransfer functions. These analyses will assist in the prediction of the hydrologic response of rehabilitated mine sites by practitioners.