Monitoring of ecosystem formation at open pit mines and waste dumps in the area of Bazhenovsky asbestos deposit by means of the earth remote sensing

Abstract

Recently Russia and other countries perform R&D using earth remote sensing (ERS). At the current stage of the research, mining state-of-the-art is assessed in the area of Bazhenovsky asbestos deposit in the Northern Ural with the determination of the mining system design parameters, and formation of vegetation at the operating and closed open pit mines and dumps is monitored with the assistance of the free available ERS resources. Using a 2014 satellite image, the qualitative and quantitative indexes of performance of the employed mining and transportation equipment in the specified area are determined. The overall mining landscape is divided into research objects - operating and closed open pit mines, waste rock dumps and tailing ponds. After processing of the satellite images obtained in the period of monitoring from 1985 to 2014, the areas are calculated for the research objects where epigenetics is revealed and the vegetation cover structure is identified. It is found that given the gradual increase in the area of mining operations from 3727 ha in 1985 to 4269 ha in 2014, the area of mine workings and waste dumps without the vegetation cover decreases from 3358 to 2387 ha. By the end of the research period (2014), the coefficients of vegetation self-restoration without special reclamation of disturbed lands are of the level of 0.107, 0.16 and 0.55 for the operating and closed open pit mines and for the waste dumps and tailing ponds, respectively. The efficiency of application of satellite observation results to studying actual data on the state of open pit mining systems is demonstrated. By the authors' estimates, self-recovery of vegetation in the areas of the landscapes generated in the course of Bazhenovsky asbestos mining has environmentally acceptable rates as the vegetation self-restoration coefficient is at the level of 0.55, which means generation of vegetation cover in the area covering more than 50% of disturbed lands.