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Sustainable Mining Practices: Balancing Resource Extraction and Environmental Preservation

Learn about mineral resources, ore extraction methods, mineral exploration techniques, mining regulations, and environmental impacts. Discover how mining affects air, water, wildlife, and land, and explore reclamation practices. Understand the importance of balancing resource extraction with environmental protection.

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Sustainable Mining Practices: Balancing Resource Extraction and Environmental Preservation

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  1. Chapter 16 Mining & Mineral Resources

  2. 16-1 Minerals & Mineral Resources • Almost every solid object is made of minerals • Problem is obtaining enough minerals for a growing world population with minimal cost to the environment

  3. Destruction from Mining

  4. What is a Mineral? • Natural • Usually inorganic solid • Particular chemical structure • Particular set of physical properties • Made up of a single element or a compound • Atoms are arranged in a regular, repeating pattern

  5. Ore Minerals • Valuable • Economical to extract • Value of mineral must exceed cost of extraction and refining • Metallic • Shiny, conductors, opaque • Native elements such as gold, silver, copper • Nonmetallic • Insulators, usually dull, may be translucent • Are compounds or native elements

  6. Gangue minerals • Have no economical value • Are separated from ore minerals during extraction process

  7. How Do Minerals Form? • On and below earth • Depends on environmental conditions • Hydrothermal Solutions • Hot, subsurface waters containing dissolved minerals • Flows through cracks in rocks and crystallizes • Evaporites • Dissolved by rivers, carried to seas/lakes • When water evaporates, they are left behind (especially rock salt – halite)

  8. Mineral Resources & Uses • Metals or alloys (combinations of metals) have major economic and industrial importance • Nonmetals used in: • Construction of buildings and roads • Glassmaking • Computer chips • Gemstones

  9. 16-2 Mineral Exploration & Mining • Exploration is how mining companies decide where they will likely find high concentrations of minerals • Planes collect data about gravity and magnetism and take photographs • Rock samples provide additional data • Once information is gathered, companies decide if it is profitable to mine

  10. Subsurface Mining • 50m or more below earth’s surface • Seam: horizontal layer of coal • Room-and-pillar: entries are cut into a seam with pillars of coal left to support the roof • Longwall: coal is sheared from a 300m wall and transported by conveyor • Solution mining: Hot water injected into vein to dissolve minerals. Air bubbles bring it to the surface

  11. Surface Mining • Ore located close to the surface • Open pit: mined downward layer by layer (may be opened by explosives) and haul trucks transport it • Quarrying: removal of large rocks • Solar evaporation: sea water is evaporated in pools allowing salt to be left behind. Produces 30% of the earth’s salt

  12. Placer Mining • Surface deposits left when rock weathers • Materials carried away and concentrated by rivers or wave action

  13. Smelting • Crushed ore is melted and purified • Flux bonds with impurities and removed them

  14. Undersea Mining • Unsuccessful due to expense

  15. 16-3 Mining Regulations/Reclamation • Mining has become one of the most heavily regulated industries in the U.S. • More people more energy more fuel more miningmore damage • Reclamation – returning the land to its original condition

  16. The Environmental Impacts of Mining

  17. Air & Noise Pollution • Noise • Equipment • Explosions • Air • Dust • What’s being done? • Mining not near urban areas • Dust/noise prohibited from leaving mining area

  18. Water Contamination • Water seeps into mines dissolving toxins and carrying them to aquatic ecosystems • Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) – sulfur picked up reacts with oxygen in water to form acid • What’s Being Done? • Disposal of acid producing rock

  19. Wildlife Displacement • Removal of vegetation which causes all wildlife to leave • What’s being done? • Reclamation plan to bring back native plants and animals

  20. Erosion/Sedimentation • Excess rock dumped and sediment carried to streams where it damages water

  21. Soil Degradation • Soil is removed • Sometimes its not replaced properly so nutrients are disturbed • What’s being done? • Soil layers stored separately and replaced in correct order

  22. Subsidence • Sinking of ground above mines • Locations of many old mines are not known • Caused by lightening, forest fires and other forms of burning • Serious problem Underground Mine Fires

  23. Regulation/Reclamation • Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 – Created a program for regulating surface mining • States have individual regulations • Permits • Bond ($$) must be posted before mining begins • Fines for noncompliance

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