Remote sensing and GIS technologies in land reclamation and landscape planning processes on post-mining areas in the Polish and world literature

Abstract

All stages of mining activities, starting with the exploration phase up to the end of the extraction works lead to significant natural landscape alteration and formation of new, anthropogenic surface features. In order to mitigate the effects caused by mining, both in Poland and in the world, a number of legal regulations have been developed, which oblige mainly the mining entrepreneurs to restore use values of degraded or devastated lands. This process called reclamation is a long-term, complex operation and covers large areas. Therefore, the academic society publishes more and more papers concerning monitoring reclamation status, as well as supporting landscape planning processes using different technologies and measurement methods. It should be emphasized that scientific publications are not only limited to the mentioned subject fields. The main purpose of this paper is to exemplify issues connected with reclamation process, which have been investigated by means of remote sensing and GIS technologies. As a part of this publication 25 scientific papers written by Polish and foreign academics have been studied. The results of a conducted analysis provide a comprehensive summary in terms of quantity and quality concerning scientific materials published so far on the subject of reclamation process, remote sensing and GIS technologies.