Author: Zuzana Zmeškalová
Across Europe, landscapes once dominated by coal mining are undergoing rapid ecological transformation. As mining activity declines, thousands of hectares of heavily disturbed land are being released back to nature. The rehabilitation of these strongly modified landscapes offers a unique opportunity to create new habitats that support long-term ecosystem stability.
Why monitoring vegetation matters
Understanding how vegetation develops on these sites is essential for informed restoration planning. Yet monitoring vegetation structure over large, complex terrain remains challenging. Traditional field methods are time-consuming, often subjective, and cannot capture detailed structural information across extensive areas. LiDAR, by contrast, penetrates the canopy and records both vegetation layers and underlying terrain, enabling rapid and accurate mapping of vegetation structure at landscape scale.
In our recent research, we analysed three LiDAR datasets (2011, 2017, 2024) to quantify temporal changes in vegetation height, cover, and vertical structure across five spoil heaps in the North Bohemian lignite basin. This multi-temporal approach allowed us to trace vegetation development over 14 years and to compare how different management strategies — natural succession and biological reclamation — influence vegetation growth dynamics.
Figure. Visualization of LiDAR point clouds from three time periods.
Key Findings:
Vegetation height
Across the study area, average vegetation height increased by about 5 metres between 2011 and 2024, with roughly one-third of the landscape gaining more than 10 metres. Successional sites remained taller, though the height difference between the two site types decreased over the study period.
Vegetation cover
Vegetation cover also increased, rising by 13% overall. We observe a clear shift on successional sites, where vegetation moved from lower forest layers toward taller stands, while reclaimed sites followed a similar but slower trajectory, transitioning from low vegetation and open areas toward forest cover, which still remains concentrated mainly in the lower tree layers (up to 15 metres).
Vertical structure Vertical structure also developed differently. Successional forests maintained a dense lower vegetation layer and showed only limited structural change. Reclaimed sites, in contrast, showed faster and more dynamic structural shifts, with vegetation filling mainly into the upper layers and a slight decline in lower-layer density. This suggests that succession retains a well-developed lower canopy, while reclamation promotes earlier canopy closure.
Figure. Point density plots showing the vertical distribution of vegetation density on successional and reclaimed sites in three-metre intervals for the period 2017–2024.
Loss of open habitats
Across all spoil heaps, low-vegetation habitats continued to shrink, losing 16% of their area. These open patches are especially important on successional sites, where many specialised species rely on them. Without management intervention to locally slow or interrupt succession, these habitats may gradually disappear.
Although these findings provides valuable insights into vegetation development on post-mining landscapes, the research is far from complete. Future work will focus more closely on how terrain reclamation — including surface reshaping and other technical interventions — influences vegetation development over time. By integrating both biological and geomorphological perspectives, we aim to build a more complete understanding of how post-mining landscapes recover.
