Surface hydrological modelling for rehabilitated landforms

Abstract

Rehabilitated landforms are often characterised by topographies, material properties and vegetation features untypical for the environment they are constructed in. Changed topography, decreased infiltration capacity and reduced vegetation cover often result in altered surface hydrological behaviours, typically resulting in increased surface runoff, which may be the cause for serious soil erosion, downstream contamination, revegetation failure and potential destruction of waste containment facilities. Proper rehabilitation planning, including the landform designs and revegetation strategies, together with the suitable water management, could help minimize these potential harmful Throughout my PhD 'adventure', there is a long list of people I wish to thank and acknowledge. Without them, this journey would not have been so enjoyable, rewarding and worthwhile. On the top of the list, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors for your guidance and constant support, in particular, Dr Thomas Baumgartl for the trust, freedom and the abundant opportunities you have given me in exploring and pursuing my own research interest. You have never failed to provide time, advices and necessary resources when I needed them. It is a great honour to work with you. My thanks also go to Dr Dion Weatheley, who trained me C++ from the beginning with great patience and enthusiasm and gave me valuable guidance on the modelling work. I am also grateful to Dr Longbin Huang for your kindness, encouragement and invaluable academic comments and suggestions to improve my work. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of many people in the field experiments. The rainfall simulation trials could not have been conducted without the technical support of Dr Rob Loch and Tim Loch from Landloch Pty Ltd. or the aid of Vinod Nath from Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation (CMLR). I would also like to thank Dr Mike Saynor and John Lowry from Supervising Scientist Division, Dr Ping Lu and Graeme Passmore from ERA and Jillianne Segura from Charles Darwin University for the collection and processing of the field data at Ranger Uranium Mine. I would like to thank Prof David Mulligan for supporting my PhD application and allowing me to have such a great opportunity to study at CMLR. My research would not have been possible without the financial assistance from the China Scholarship Council,