Dendra CEO Susan Graham explains how digital technologies are changing the way ecosystem rehabilitation is being undertaken in the Australian mining industry.
Given the vast and remote expanses of the Australian resources industry, keeping on top of mine rehabilitation processes is easier said than done.
This is why Dendra, a leading environmental technology company, has developed a platform to enable operators to visualise and analyse end-to-end terrestrial restoration in one place.
“Ecosystem restoration is complex and, in many cases, a mine’s environmental teams and consultants are very detail-oriented,” Dendra chief executive officer Susan Graham told Australian Mining.
“But there are many different stakeholders when it comes to ecosystem restoration, so we’ve built a new platform to bring simplicity to the process while also enabling our clients to manage complex sites and gain valuable insights at very large scales.
“These insights can direct them to the highest priority issues and the biggest wins on-site, so our clients can engage everyone from consultants, contractors, regulators and community stakeholders.”
Image: Dendra
Graham said the new platform will be particularly beneficial for large mine sites, which need to simplify their understanding of their operations.
“The platform addresses some serious pain points in the market, where the challenges begin the moment a seed hits the ground, whether it’s erosion weathering away at the soil, or invasive plant species competing with the valuable native species you’ve just planted,” she said.
“Having a data platform to support managing these aspects helps to address each of these issues and avoid restoration or rehabilitation failures and rework, while also providing proof and data to relinquish the mine site once it is fully rehabilitated.”
Dendra backs its platform with ultra high-resolution mapping and artificial intelligence (AI) insights, enabling miners to generate crystal-clear visualisations of their sites to detect success and many ecosystem risks that present opportunities for improvement.
This enables environmental teams to be able to manage their ecosystems with more conviction and predictability, leading to better restoration over a longer, more sustained period, paving the way for improved mine rehabilitation outcomes and the ability to relinquish land sooner.
The development of Dendra’s platform is one of many successes achieved in 2024.
The company’s mapping capabilities continue to expand, with the ability to capture 2000 hectares of land in a day.
“This is transformational for mine sites, greatly reducing the need for boots on the ground,” Graham said.
“Because of this scale capacity, we’re now looking at much larger sites, moving from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of hectares at a time, which wasn’t possible 10 years ago.”
Dendra has worked closely with its mining partners to launch a new erosion solution that harnesses existing LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data sets that miners use daily.
“Customers are seeing real value from this solution because, from an existing operational asset, Dendra is able to repurpose LiDAR data to provide erosion insights, giving them extra value on something they’ve already purchased,” Graham said.
The erosion solution has come to the fore at the Jellinbah coal mine in Queensland. By pairing LiDAR data with Dendra’s high-powered platform, Jellinbah has successfully pinpointed the erosion features that impact rehabilitation, enabling the site to implement informed strategies to tackle environmental hazards.
Dendra also continues to expand its aerial seeding capability, which Graham calls the “critical instigator” at the beginning of the revegetation process.
Image: Dendra
Aerial seeding is becoming a popular solution in the Australian mining industry due to its speed, seed capabilities, safety and cost-effectiveness, surpassing traditional methods carried out by light vehicles and dozers, which can present safety hazards and disturb the ground as they seed.
Dendra Australia general manager Guy Smith said the company has seen a 200 per cent year-on-year increase in the hectares seeded in 2024, fuelled by higher demand and increased capability.
“The Dendra team has done significant work to meet seeding demand,” Smith told Australian Mining. “We’ve completely redesigned the seeding unit that sits on top of the drone to specifically deal with the diverse nature of Australian native seeds.
“We’re seeing a lot more reliability and consistency with that product given such an increase in demand, and in terms of the analysis work, we’ve been seeing significant reductions in site-wide weed analysis times given the developments we’ve made in the AI back-end.
“While sites we’re seeding are getting larger, analysis times are coming down, which is encouraging to see.”
As Dendra continues to shape a new era of ecosystem restoration and management, where technology is unlocking more capabilities than ever before, the company is attracting interest from new markets.
This has seen Dendra grow its international client base. This includes a significant presence in the United Arab Emirates, where the company is leading various projects including the restoration of 27.3 million mangroves.
Closer to home, Dendra is bringing environmental consultants into the fold.
“Our ecology-powered AI operating on ultra-high-res data is becoming highly prized by consultants who are increasingly looking to new technology to augment their customer offerings,” Graham said.
Image: Dendra
“Consultants serve multiple verticals. They can work across mine rehabilitation, infrastructure projects and real estate developments, for example, with each of these applications facing the same fundamental environmental challenges.
“Dendra’s capabilities span each of these use cases, and as they work with their clients on new developments, environmental consultants face biodiversity and land management challenges that can be addressed with our technology.”
Graham said environmental consultants “understand the value of AI”.
“Because Dendra focuses specifically on environmental monitoring and management, consultants can see how AI can help them, rather than just being another ChatGPT for fun,” she said.
“The momentum from the consultancy industry has really picked up in the last few months, so we’ll be putting increased resources into this area in 2025 to really empower environmental consultants to leverage data and AI tools to delight their customers.”
As Dendra continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible with ecosystem restoration, larger sections of the Australian mining industry are catching onto the company’s inspired approach.
Word of mouth is proliferating and Dendra is attracting more demand for its solutions than ever before. And in the context of where the industry sits with technology and AI, this could be just the beginning of Dendra’s ascension.
This feature appeared in the December 2024 issue of Australian Mining.
