Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Hydrology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol Research papers Mining activity impacts on soil erodibility and reservoirs silting: Evaluation of mining decommissioning strategies Tommaso Pacetti ⁎ , Marco Lompi, Claudio Petri, Enrica Caporali University of Florence, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Italy ARTICLE INFO This manuscript was handled by Marco Borga, Editor-in-Chief Keywords: Land use change Hydrosedimentological modelling Swat Soil erodibility Reservoirs silting Mining site decommissioning ABSTRACT This study focuses on the nexus between coal mining and water storage, analyzing the strategies to reduce the negative efects of exhausted/abandoned mining sites on catchments where water reservoirs are located. Sediment management represent a key point to promote sustainable water resources development and it is strictly connected with the proper management of land use change, especially in the areas devoted to mining activities. The presence of a reservoir represents a major challenge because these structures are threatened by the rapid loss of storage volume due to excessive sedimentation. The case of San Cipriano reservoir in central Italy represents an ideal set to explore the efects of mining on water storage because it is located at the outlet of a catchment strongly infuenced by one of the most important lignite mine in central Italy. The Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is used to evaluate diferent scenarios of mine decommissioning, aiming at supporting the identifcation of the best strategies to avoid reservoir sedi- mentation. Two scenarios of environmental restoration of the mining area are evaluated. In the frst case, the ongoing reforestation with native plants like oaks and deciduous trees is analyzed. In the second scenario the authors focus on the evaluation of a wider landscape restoration project (including reforestation and river bodies rehabilitation) recently drafted by local institutions. The results provide a quantitative evaluation of the efectiveness of the proposed strategies in reducing the impacts of existing mining sites from a hydrological perspective. In particular, the analyzed scenarios show that aforestation and river restoration lead to a strong reduction of sediment yield while downward trend occurred for water yield. 1. Introduction Coal-based power plant represented one of the pillars of the Italian energy system up to the 70′s (Bartoletto and Rubio, 2008), supporting the development of the country postwar economy (Magazzino, 2014). The necessity of energy for the reconstruction and the development of new industrial production led to the exploitation of the country most available energy sources and new coal mines were initiated throughout Italy. According to the Italian Agency for Environmental Protection (APAT, Agenzia per la Protezione dell’Ambiente e per i servizi Tecnici) mining census, active mines in Italy reached their peak in the 50′s and their development was associated to the construction of several coal based thermal plants that included new reservoirs to serve the elec- tricity generation (APAT, 2005). The coal mining of the frst half of the 20th century caused sig- nifcant environmental impacts due to the change in land use that af- fected the existing ecosystems, determining a radical transformation on the landscape functionality (Chadwick et al., 2013). In the second half of 20th century coal use started to decrease, refecting the European generalized decreasing trend (Li et al., 2019). At present electricity generation from coal represents around the 13% of the total energy produced in Italy (Littlecott and Schwartzkopf, 2015). The energy national strategy supported the conversion of the existing coal-based plants to more sustainable production systems, but the retirement of mining sites became a major challenge also due to an incomplete policy support (Littlecott, 2017). On one hand there is the necessity of mini- mizing the social and economic consequences of restructuring and the reducing the coal industry (Rabanal, 2003), on the other hand the ne- cessity to identify the appropriate restoration measures to handle landscape change and minimize the associated environmental impacts (Zhengfu et al., 2010). Water management plays a key role for determining strategies to reduce these impacts, e.g. necessity of restoring natural drainage pat- terns, implementing food control measures and restoring hydrological https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125107 Received 29 November 2019; Received in revised form 16 March 2020; Accepted 21 May 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: tommaso.pacetti@unif.it (T. Pacetti). Journal of Hydrology 589 (2020) 125107 Available online 04 June 2020 0022-1694/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T