May 2007

Carlson Software's Natural Regrade Returns Land to What Nature Would Have Done over 1000 Years

Named a 'TIPS Core Software' by U.S. Office of Surface Mining

MAYSVILLE, Ky.--  The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) has named Carlson Software’s Natural Regrade a “TIPS Core Software” for mine reclamation design and review use.

Carlson Natural Regrade features the GeoFluv™ approach to stable landform design, using fluvial geomorphic principles – essentially designing the land to be as it would have naturally formed on that site over thousands of years.

The TIPS acronym stands for “Technical Innovation and Professional Services,” an OSM task force whose mission is “to provide practical, advanced tools and techniques to improve the efficiency and effectiveness in implementation of SMCRA [the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977].”

After testing Carlson Natural Regrade on actual projects, Mychal Yellowman, a civil engineer for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, noted that the intent of SMCRA is to combine the mining process with environmentally acceptable reclamation practices.         

“With the availability of software like Carlson’s Natural Regrade, complex fluvial geomorphic reclamation practices are easy to apply,” Yellowman concluded. “Natural Regrade offers a quick method to design stable, natural-acting, maintenance-free post-mining surfaces.”

In addition to being more natural, the designs developed by Carlson Natural Regrade also cost less, as discovered by OSM testing when bids for construction were put out on both traditional design and Natural Regrade GeoFluv™ design.

Natural alternative

The traditional approach to land reclamation disturbed the stability of natural landforms and then added expensive measures to try to fix the resulting problems.

“The resulting landform is a bleak landscape that provides minimal diversity for plants and wildlife, and is not visually satisfying,” said Nicholas Bugosh, Carlson Software’s GeoFluv Technical Director who is based in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Carlson Natural Regrade provides an alternative approach to this all-too-common scenario of uniform slopes with artificial water conveyances and expensive erosion control gimmicks.

Other benefits of Natural Regrade software include much less time spent in design, which allows users to quickly evaluate alternative approaches as well as to take advantage of incremental bonding savings, improved post-reclamation land use opportunities, and elimination of long-term maintenance requirements.

With Carlson Natural Regrade, the natural beauty of the reclaimed land is returned while stability against erosion is established and the water quality remains comparable or better than surrounding undisturbed lands. In addition to mining, this is also applicable to large scale land development projects including subdivisions, malls, and business parks.

At a recent national forum on geomorphic reclamation design, which included tours of mine reclamation designed using the GeoFluv approach and Natural Regrade at both dragline and truck-and-shovel coal mines, Willis Gainer of OSM introduced the tour saying, “The purpose of this forum is to introduce you to a new method of reclamation that we think is the future of reclamation.”

Visit www.carlsonsw.com/regrade or call 800-989-5028 for more information about Carlson Natural Regrade or to find a Carlson sales associate or dealer in your region.

About Carlson Software: Carlson Software specializes in office design, field data collection, and machine control products for the civil engineering, surveying, construction and mining industries worldwide. Founded in 1983, Carlson Software is headquartered in Maysville, Kentucky, with offices in Boston, Atlanta, and Queensland, Australia.