Reference site selection associated with mining and resource development requires a comprehensive approach so that stakeholders can be confident that restoration efforts have appropriate target ecosystems. Here, we present our process to select reference sites, within a savanna ecosystem, which will be used to develop and assess closure criteria and restoration guidelines for Ranger Mine (Northern Territory, Australia). The selection of reference sites followed five steps involving desktop and field methods. We recommend that restoration projects consider inclusion criteria, randomly select sites from areas matching the chosen criteria, conduct preliminary data analysis, estimate and update sampling effort and precession at several points throughout the project, and invite stakeholder feedback and revision of the process as often as required. This detailed approach appears to be the first to demonstrate how to use available data to reduce bias, address sampling effort and site selection quantitatively, involve stakeholders, and provide useful data which can be used to calibrate ecological restoration outcomes for savanna ecosystems

中文翻译：

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矿区生态系统恢复参考选址协议

与采矿和资源开发相关的参考地点选择需要一种综合方法，以便利益相关者可以确信恢复工作具有适当的目标生态系统。在这里，我们介绍了在稀树草原生态系统中选择参考地点的过程，该过程将用于制定和评估 Ranger Mine（澳大利亚北领地）的关闭标准和恢复指南。参考站点的选择遵循五个步骤，涉及桌面和现场方法。我们建议恢复项目考虑纳入标准，从符合所选标准的区域中随机选择地点，进行初步数据分析，估计和更新整个项目中多个点的采样工作和进动，并尽可能经常邀请利益相关者反馈和修订过程必需的。