The Centre for Environmental Responsibility in Mining (CERM) brings together leading expertise in environmental and water sciences to address the complex sustainability challenges facing the global mining sector. Formed through the integration of the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation and the Centre for Water in the Minerals Industry, CERM is uniquely positioned to deliver holistic, science-based solutions that support responsible mining practices across the full spectrum of resource commodities.
Our researchers are environmental and water specialists who work collaboratively to generate high-impact research that informs mine planning, operations, closure, and post-mining transitions. With capabilities spanning ecological engineering, hydrology, remote sensing, aquatic ecology, and stakeholder engagement, CERM supports mining companies committed to improving sustainability performance and maintaining a social licence to operate.
CERM’s researchers collaborate with partners who value innovation, rigour, and long-term environmental stewardship including industry, national and international research organisations, governments, and communities to ensure our work is globally relevant and locally grounded.
Our Centre is one of the only research groups that applies High Reliability Organisational (HRO) thinking to enhance sustainability outcomes. We regularly review current and emerging global challenges in the resources industry to remain at the forefront of the mining sector’s response to closure, post mining transitions and climate change.
Our capabilities have developed and evolved over the years to meet the current and future knowledge needs of the sector and its stakeholders but broadly can be categorised into a number of key thematic areas.
- Ecological Engineering and Rehabilitation of Mine Wastes
- Ecosystem structure and function
- Stable landforms and sustainable substrates
- Water and contaminants in the landscape
- Monitoring and mapping technologies
- Mine closure and end use planning that fosters extensive engagement with multiple stakeholders to solve the water and environmental related challenges associated with regional transitions in mine-closure scenarios.
- Managing water resources in a changing climate, using a global perspective and promoting comprehensive analysis system-thinking, which recognises that water is a shared and valuable resource affected by a complex set of surface, underground, climatic and anthropogenic phenomena
- Spatial science that integrates and models the distribution of water-relevant characteristics in time and space
- Society and water, where we incorporate social considerations into water management
- Hydrology and Hydrogeology - helping the mining and gas industries effectively manage their water interactions to accurately quantify and advise on surface and subsurface hydrological risks that can affect mine and gas operations.
- Hydrochemistry and Aquatic Ecology - understanding water quantity and quality interactions in surface and ground water systems to promote ecologically sustainable development and to provide expert advice on catchment water management.
Ecological Engineering in Mining group
Developing technologies to rehabilitate metal mine tailings and other waste domains to improve economic and ecological sustainability; produce cost-effective remediation of contaminated land; create new knowledge on the biogeochemistry of engineered tailings-soil formation, ecophysiology of native plants and ecological linkages in soil-plant systems.
Ecosystem Assessment, Restoration and Resilience group
Assessing the impacts of mining activities on flora and fauna; develop innovative approaches to restore ecosystem services and practices that encourage recolonisation by native species; examine the resilience of ecosystems under specific disturbance regimes; discover and understand the utility of metallophyte plants; create approaches for the recovery and sustainability of disturbed land.
Environmental Geochemistry group
This group develops innovative tools for understanding and predicting geochemical processes, which underpin sustainable management of waste rock dumps, mineral processing tailings and final voids.
See more information on the Environmental Geochemistry group
Water management
- Capacity Building of the Minerals Council of Australia Water Accounting Framework
- Norfolk Island Hydrological Assessment
- Water Sensitive Mining (ARC Future Fellowship)
- Observing Land & Water Footprints of Small-scale Land use change using High Resolution Satellite Images (Philippines – Cagayan)
- Protection of Rivers & Environmental Flows in Peru: Ocoña Pilot River Basin
- Assessment of Coal Mining-related Risks to the People, Environment & Economy in the Departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá in Central Colombia
- Seawater Supplies to Manage Water Resources Risks & Opportunities in Northern Chile (Antofagasta)
- Quantifying the Economic Value of Water in Regions with Competition between Mining and other Water Users (Chile – Aconcagua)
- Salinity Tolerance of Freshwater Organisms from the Southern & Western Coalfields
- Swamp Hydrology Numerical Modelling for Advancing Rehabilitation Planning & Management
- Resetting our understanding of the Great Artesian Basin
- Water Use in the Surat Basin
- Recharge Estimation in the Surat Basin
- A Water Chemistry Atlas for the Gas Fields
- AQUA-ECO Health Sampling & Analysis Project
- Assessing the Ecotoxicology of Salinity on Organisms from Seasonally Flowing Streams in the Bowen Basin (QLD)
- Northern Bowen Basin Water & Salt Management Practices – Bowen Basin (QLD)
- SWAP: Social Water Assessment Protocol
Environmental projects (Ecosystem Assessment, Restoration and Resilience research group)
- Detection of weed species using high-resolution drone imagery and object based image analysis
- Rehabilitation of mines in the Alligator Rivers Region
- Wildlife Dispersal Modelling for Road Mitigation Purposes (Kenya)
- Elucidating the cellular distribution and pathways of nickel accumulation in tropical hyperaccumulator plant species
- Testing the Resilience of Mine Site Rehabilitation
- Monitoring mines and their rehabilitation success
- Mapping biodiversity corridors and mine rehabilitation opportunities