Rehabilitation of lands disturbed by open-pit mining operations

The negative consequences of open-pit mining of minerals include retirement of significant land areas from agricultural use and their disturbance during mining operations, changes in hydrogeological conditions in the mined area and its landscapes, development of erosion, as well as mixing of soil with infertile and even toxic soil brought to the surface.

Soil reclamation is a system of measures that allows to restore ecological paramaters of soil and economic efficiency of the mining area. There are two stages of post-reclamation — technical and biological. The choice of technology for the mining technical stage of reclamation depends on the future use of the reclaimed lands.

Author: S.I. Fomin, M.A. Marinin, M.P. Ovsyannikov

Section: Ecology and safety

Keywords: reclamation, mining technical stage, soil disturbance, top soil