Visual Impact Assessment of Seaside Quarrying Operations and Planned Restoration

Digital photography combined with three dimensional models of topography, mining operations and restoration plans can lead to extremely realistic images and animations of the current and future states of a mine or quarry. The amount of work and the time required for the successful modelling of a mine and its restoration plan are surprisingly low nowadays. All these mean that the visual impact of mining and quarrying operations can be easily assessed using common computer hardware and some dedicated software packages. LAVA Mining and Quarrying SA is a company committed to strive continuously for the highest possible environment protection at the company’s quarries. The pozzolanic rock quarry located at Xylokeratia is one of the company’s quarries on the island of Milos and the subject of the study presented in this paper. A thorough restoration plan of the Xylokeratia quarry is being completed by the company. For its purposes, a complete visual impact assessment study was performed at the Department of Geotechnology and Environmental Engineering of the Technological Education Institute of Western Macedonia. The procedures used in this study and the produced visual results are presented in this paper.