Fugitive dust is generated along unpaved mine roads from intermitlent equipment traffic. Typically. the majority of such traffic consists of trucks hauling either mine product or waste from the surface mine pit andlor the processing plant. Fugitive dust generated along these unpaved mine roads includes particles of all sizes which become airborne. The potential hazards include the deleterious e...

Pond-breeding amphibians exhibit large intra- and interspecific differences in the duration of the aquatic larval phase. In contaminated aquatic environments, a prolonged larval phase means prolonged exposure to pollutants and, potentially, more severe toxic effects. In the laboratory, we tested this hypothesis by exposing green frog larvae (Rana clamitans) to commercial clean sand (control), s...

Ecological restoration of mine tailings have impact on soil physiochemical properties and microbial communities. The surface soil has been a primary concern in the past decades, however it remains poorly understood about the adaptive response of microbial communities along the profile during ecological restoration of the tailings. In this study, microbial communities along a 60-cm profile were ...

This article reports fibre-optic oxygen measurements on a reactive mine waste heap located in the polymetallic sulphide mine district of Freiberg in south-eastern Germany. The heaped material consists of sulphide-bearing tailings from a processing plant of a lead-zinc mine. Mine waste material was deposited in the water phase after separation of mining ores in a flotation process. The tailing i...

Without treatment, the harmful effects of acid mine drainage (AMD) lead to destruction surrounding ecosystems, including serious health impacts affected communities. Active methods, like chemical neutralization, are most widely used approach AMD management. However, these techniques require constant inputs energy, chemicals, and manpower, which become unsustainable in long-term. One promising s...

Open pit mine design and production scheduling deals with the quest for the most profitable mining sequence over the life of a mine. The dynamics of mining ore and waste and the spatial grade uncertainty make predictions of the optimal mining sequence a challenging task. A new optimization approach to production scheduling based on the effective management of waste mining and orebody grade unce...

Two nanofiltration membranes, a Dow NF 270 polyamide thin film and a TriSep TS 80 polyamide thin film, were investigated for their retention of ionic species when filtering mine influenced water streams at a range of acidic pH values. The functional iso-electric point of the membranes, characterized by changes in retention over a small pH range, were examined by filtering solutions of sodium su...

The socio-ecological impacts of large scale resource extraction are frequently underreported in underdeveloped regions. The open-pit Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, is one of the world's largest copper and gold extraction operations. Grasberg mine tailings are discharged into the lowland Ajkwa River deposition area (ADA) leading to forest inundation and degradation of water bodies critical t...