In recent years rapid advances have been made in the technology used for
hydrology and erosion modelling of rural catchments. These advances
have been driven by the growing availability of digital terrain maps that
can be used to automatically define catchment properties that previously
had to be manually extracted from contour maps. In addition, these
models have, in principle at least, more powerful predictive capability.
The author is involved in a number of projects to migrate and further
develop these models for application to mine rehabilitation assessment.
Current technologies for hydrology and erosion assessment (eg
CREAMS, ANSWERS) are reviewed, underlying principles highlighted
and deficiencies in the context of mine rehabilitation design assessment
addressed. The advantages and disadvantages of the new digital terrain
map tools (eg WEPP, SIBERIA) are discussed. Current work integrating
these new models with existing rehabilitation design tools (eg ACIRL's
ARGUS computer package) highlights the advantages of an integrated
approach using digital terrain maps; cheaper, faster, lower impact and
more flexible rehabilitation design. The use of novel visualisation tools to
aid the design process is discussed. The paper is illustrated by
applications to mine sites in Queensland and the Northern Territory.