Kamila Svobodova

Community values toward landscapes, particularly before mining begins, are often overlooked in conventional social impact assessments in the mining industry. These emotional, cultural and relational values tend to be intangible and difficult to incorporate into formal planning tools. We propose public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) as an underutilized method to address this gap. Rooted in participatory planning and spatial analysis, PPGIS offers a unique way to integrate landscape values into social impact assessments. When applied early in the mine lifecycle, PPGIS can inform both project design and closure planning, ensuring that social and cultural dimensions of landscapes are considered from the outset. It aligns with regulatory requirements for meaningful community engagement, baseline assessment and closure visioning, and can strengthen both procedural fairness and social licence to operate. By combining technical data with local knowledge, PPGIS can support more inclusive, place-based and value-driven approaches to mine development and closure.

Nontechnical Summary: The need for critical minerals for various technologies for commercial and defense use has led to a range of national policy interventions. However, many of these new laws to encourage mining, or protect local industries have not considered as scientific data on mineral reserves or the economic viability of setting specific targets. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act is a pivotal case in point that illustrates this challenge. We present a review of the range of laws and policies that have been set forth worldwide. Technical Summary: Growing international conflict between countries that have large mineral production and processing capacity and those which are in demand of critical raw materials for new technologies has led to a proliferation of policies that promote resource nationalism or ‘friend-shoring’. We analyzed over 400 critical raw material policies to date that have been documented by the International Energy Agency's policy tracking tool and present the findings of the six most active jurisdictions. The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act which came into force in May 2024 stands out as the most significant legislative step taken thus far but needs better interface with environmental and social data on impacts and benefits. By analyzing the challenges faced by lithium mining projects across a range of technologies and geographic locations in Europe, we suggest the use of data generated from life cycle analyses, economic geological calculations, and ecosystem service valuation in improving the implementation of such policies and also mitigate social conflicts. Social Media Summary: There are now more than 400 critical raw material policies worldwide, but they need to be predicated in economic and geological data to be effective.

With increasing urbanization and demand for construction materials, quarries have become central to the recovery of degraded landscapes into spaces that offer ecological, but also social benefits. While ecological restoration has long been investigated, integrated social‐ecological restoration of post‐quarrying landscapes remains underexplored. The overall aim of this study is to advance social‐ecological restoration by assessing how cultural ecosystem services (CES) and landscape features (LF) are represented in social media posts about quarries in Germany, Denmark, and the Czech Republic. We focus on concepts of CES and LF to investigate the interactions between humans and restored ecosystems. Using a mixed‐methods approach, we analyzed 1,660 geotagged photographs from 50 quarries across three regions: Berlin, Roskilde, and the Czech Karst. Flickr social media data were analyzed to elicit the richness of CES and LF and to identify popular quarries. Our results indicate that rehabilitated quarries exhibit higher CES richness than abandoned or operational ones, and that accessibility significantly influences public engagement. Our study demonstrates that once primarily industrial sites, quarries can evolve into vibrant social‐ecological systems that provide diverse LF and CES. It also points to the potential of social media data for designing restoration efforts from a social‐ecological perspective. Such an approach provides insights into public perceptions of restored urban landscapes and may inform future restoration strategies.

Recognizing the prevailing negative public opinion on mining, it is important to understand how firsthand encounters with mining activities might influence these perceptions. This study investigates how field trips to open pit coal mines and their reclamation sites in the Czech Republic affected the attitudes of 148 university students toward mining and mine reclamation. Using pre and post trip questionnaires, we observed significant changes: Students became less neutral about mining, saw it as a temporary disruptive activity, expressed reduced concern for social conflicts in mining areas, and showed increased support for the ecological restoration of post mining sites. These findings underscore the transformative impact of direct engagement with mine reclamation activities on shaping attitudes. Understanding these effects offers promise for positively shifting public perceptions of mining practices, emphasizing the potential for constructive changes in attitudes through field experiences with reclamation efforts in the Global North.

Rapid urbanization increases pressure on extracting construction materials through quarrying, which is disrupting and re‐making places worldwide. In this study, we examine how people's place making and sense of place are reconfigured through quarrying. Taking a case study approach, we investigate perceptions of sense of place after quarrying and social‐ecological restoration in a limestone region of the Czech Republic. Our survey of 400 visitors shows that quarrying affects sense of place through feelings, activities, and quarry features. These can be predicted by socio‐demographic characteristics, experiences and preferences, and the context of a particular quarry. We conclude that sense of place and place making should be key themes of the sustainable development debate, as they help to better understand the human variables that constrain or enable socially just development. Our approach provides a conceptual basis for this by revealing the processes through which people iteratively recreate their connections to places shaped by long‐lasting disruptions, such as mining and quarrying, that erased prior socio‐cultural and material landscapes.

The increase in farm plot size is one of the most apparent and significant trends that have influenced central and eastern European agricultural landscapes since the 1950s. In many countries where the average plot size in traditional land-use systems did not exceed several hectares, present-day plots reach the size of 200 ha or more. In recent times, efforts have been made to reverse this trend to restore important ecosystem functions and to re-establish the aesthetic values of everyday landscapes. Visual landscape quality is becoming a major driving force in the development of agricultural landscapes with known effects on people’s well-being and health, and this quality plays an increasingly important role in agricultural policies. However, no comprehensive research has been carried out to establish the links between perceived visual landscape quality and the scale of the farm plot pattern. The current study was therefore designed to determine whether greater farmland pattern heterogeneity, i.e., smaller farm plot sizes, is consistent with higher visual preferences. The results showed that people preferred a small-scale plot pattern in landscapes characterized by a flat relief and a low proportion of woody vegetation. These homogeneous landscapes were also overall considered significantly less beautiful than more diverse landscapes. However, even a moderate decrease in plot size notably improved these low beauty scores. These preferences were displayed consistently by all respondents, and most strongly by older respondents, respondents with a higher level of education, and those professionally engaged in landscape design or conservation. The high level of consensus among respondents in rejecting further land consolidation in homogeneous landscapes, which form a large proportion of European farmland, underlines that the results of this study provide a valid argument for discussing sustainable agricultural plot sizes as part of agricultural policy-making.

We develop a novel approach to analysing decarbonisation strategies by linking global resource inventories with demographic systems. Our ‘mine-town systems’ approach establishes an empirical basis for examining the spatial extent of the transition and demographic effects of changing energy systems. The research highlights an urgent need for targeted macro-level planning as global markets see a decline in thermal coal and a ramp up of other mining commodities. Our findings suggest that ramping up energy transition metals (ETM) could be more disruptive to demographic systems than ramping down coal. The data shows asymmetry in the distribution of risks: mine-town systems within the United States are most sensitive to coal phase-out, while systems in Australia and Canada are most sensitive to ETM phase-in. A complete phase-out of coal could disrupt demographic systems with a minimum of 33.5 million people, and another 115.7 million people if all available ETM projects enter production.