Optimizing post-mining land-use decision making in cooperation with stakeholders

There are several possibilities for rehabilitating quarries after mineral resource excavation. In Estonia, creating forest, water body, meadow, arable land or recreational area are main reuse alternatives to rehabilitate sand, gravel, clay, limestone, dolomite and oil shale quarries. Rehabilitation decisions are currently being made inconsistently based on different limited arguments and without the involvement of stakeholders. To choose the optimal alternative for each site, legislative, environmental and socio-economic criteria should be considered in a systematic way. The main aim of the paper is to create a decision model containing decision tree with restrictive criteria and decision-matrix with comparison criteria, and test it to choose the optimal reuse alternatives for three quarries in Estonia. This increases the transparency of such decisions and creates a tool for choosing optimal reuse alternative for mineral resource quarries. Decision tree was created in cooperation with experts based on environmental and legislative criteria. To find out the comparison criteria and their weights, 93 stakeholders such as landowner, local communities, experts from governmental agencies, environmental NGOs, universities, environmental management and excavation companies were engaged via survey. The decision model succeeded to find optimal reuse alternative for three tested quarries, and application of this decision model supports the sustainable land-use and development. With some country-specific or legislation-based modifications, the model can be applied also in other countries. The model is easily usable and will fasten making sustainable decisions of the reuse of quarry areas and give clear arguments in the communication with the stakeholders.