Soil Environmental Quality Assessment in Sustainable Rehabilitation of Mine Waste Area: Establishing an Integrated Indicator-based System

Soil environmental quality is the capacity of a soil to function, within ecosystem and land use boundaries, to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant, animal and human health'. In the long-term, vegetative rehabilitation of mining wastes aims at, as far as possible, the proper ecological integration of the reclaimed area into the surrounding landscape, which is sustainable and requires minimal maintenance. This article presents here an indicator-based system of soil environmental quality that evaluates sustainable rehabilitation of mine waste through a set of 2 subindicators, chemical fertility and stocks of organic matter, and further combines them into a single general Indicator of Soil Quality (GISQ). The design and calculation of the indicators were based on sequences of multivariate analyses. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to assess soil quality overall. A GISQ combined the different subindicators providing a global assessment of soil environmental quality. Our findings provide evidence that selected indicators can provide a definitive, quantitative assessment of soil environmental quality and lend credence to the value of our approach in quantifying relationships between soil function and indicators for specific areas. Key-Words: Soil environmental quality; Sustainable rehabilitation, Mine waste area; Indicator-based