Analysis of reclaimed areas in the Northern Bohemia brown coal open cast mining areas monitored by remote sensing data using cartography tools and GIS LENA HALOUNOVA, JANA PETRUCHOVA, PETR JUNEK Department of Mapping and Cartography Czech Technical University in Prague Thakurova 7, Prague 6, 169 27 CZECH REPUBLIC Abstract: - The Northern-Bohemia comprises large areas with underground mining – in prevailing part of brown coal - and brown coal open-casts. Abandoned open-casts have been being reclaimed. The history of the first reclamation is longer than thirty years. The reclamation was performed by several possible ways – new water basins were created in deep pitfalls, large areas were covered by forests, and large areas turned into agricultural fields. Their main purpose of water basins is to fill in land depressions after excavation. These basins allowed to transform surrounding parts of the landscape into recreational areas. Agricultural reclamation represents changing of previous open mines into agriculturally used areas. Forest reclamation is a creation of new mixed or deciduous forests whose good growth and sound stand is a measure of successfulness of the reclamation. Vegetation indices (VI) were used for evaluating of reclamation development from 3 multitemporal TM satellite data (1988, 1992, and 1998) and Ikonos data (2003). 12 vegetation indices were calculated from individual images (individual years). Their values were compared among individual years where average values of each reclaimed area were the comparable values. Relative values of VI were used for the final evaluation of reclaimed area developments. These values took into account climate differences among years. The final evaluation discovered reliability of ground truth data taken from reclamation projects and showed where the reclamation lasted longer and therefore ended later if compared to the projects, e.g. The evaluation presents more or less correlated VI values for certain age and forest types of reclaimed areas. Key-Words: - vegetation index, remote sensing, reclamation, GIS, Landsat, Ikonos. 1 Introduction Areas with open-casts cover hundreds of hectares in the study area near Teplice in the Northern Bohemia (Fig.1). Large areas have already been excavated and have been reclaimed and large areas are now technologically or biologically reclaimed. According to the Czech Mining Law, mining organizations are responsible for the post- mining reclamation. Reclamation investments reach high values. Their effectiveness has not yet been controlled in the Czech Republic. The goal of this project is to evaluate this effectiveness. The reclamation process can be characterized by several phases. The first one is called technical phase and it lasts about two years. Terrain morphology is prepared including a final surface cover created by fertile soil layer. The morphology is determined by resulted landforms and their slope stabilities and by pit shapes themselves. Their final morphology and cover type are designed by experienced specialists in individual mining organizations. Selected areas with low slope were transformed to pastures or agriculture fields. Deep excavated areas are often transformed into water basins. The Barbora Lake as the largest one is an example of them serving now as an already famous recreational center. Certain areas were prepared for the permanent vegetation – forest or non-forest. The forests are mixed forest – with mixed deciduous trees, or deciduous and coniferous trees, and with shrubs sometimes (Fig.2), [18]. The technological phase has to create completely new landscape different from the one before mining activities. The final morphology is influenced by shapes of the final state of mining, however the final morphology is designed according to getechnics stability laws. At the moment, the ground surface is formed by deep soil layers whose character is not suitable for planting. New final soil layer with apropriate quality is distributed on these areas of previous mining. This step is the last one of the technological phase. The second phase is a biological one when grass and two or three year-old trees are planted out. The biological reclamation comprises not only reforestation, but also new vegetation areas for pasturing and preparation of agricultural fields for crop growing. The main purpose of the biological phase is to create a new landscape surface resisting erosion. Combination of a long list of various trees and shrubs were used for individual areas to form 2005 WSEAS Int. Conf. on REMOTE SENSING, Venice, Italy, November 2-4, 2005 (pp49-54)