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Mine closure and planning for decline
Published in Lochner Marais, The Social Impacts of Mine Closure in South Africa, 2023
Besides the social cost of mine closure, there are, of course, concerns about the financial cost. Mining companies are legally required to provide detailed cost estimates related to land rehabilitation. But simply complying with this legislation is a narrow response to mine closure. The industry requires much more research to understand the social costs.
An evolving agenda for environmental, health, and safety management in mining
Published in Natalia Yakovleva, Edmund Nickless, Routledge Handbook of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, 2022
Luis E. Sánchez, Daniel M. Franks
Contemporary approaches to EHS management in mining emerged in the second half of the 20th century, largely focused on water and air pollution. The 1970s saw an expansion of issues to include topics such as land rehabilitation – abandoning an exhausted mine was then seen as a normal part of the mining business. Since then, new topics emerged (Figure 17.1), while other concerns raised by advocates and researchers have not yet found their way into the list of issues of mine planners and regulators, such as light pollution (Hölker et al., 2010).
Occupational Health and Safety in Mines
Published in Debi Prasad Tripathy, Mine Safety Science and Engineering, 2019
The life span of mining consists of mineral exploration, underground or opencast mine development, mine operation, mine closure, and land rehabilitation. Many OHS hazards are associated with the life span of mining. Compared with opencast mine workers, underground mine workers are exposed to a greater number of hazards at the workplace that adversely affect their health. The most common health hazards in mines are represented in Figure 8.1. Table 8.1 presents the diseases that have been notified as those connected with mining operations (Sishodiya and Guha, 2013).
Strategies in improving plant salinity resistance and use of salinity resistant plants for economic sustainability
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Neelma Munir, Maria Hasnain, Ute Roessner, Zainul Abideen
Salinity and drought are the major stress factors which can be better tolerated by halophytes than most other plants. Establishment of plants on abiotic stress impacted areas (salinity and drought) involving native species is known as revegetation (Yan et al., 2020). These adaptive properties make halophytes valuable as good practice for revegetation and rehabilitation in order to maintain biodiversity. Growing halophytes on marginal lands is applicable and an environmentally friendly approach for rehabilitation, revegetation and phytoamelioration of the salt-affected soils. The rehabilitation of these salt‐affected soil is necessary as these lands can be reused for agricultural resources, such as grazing and as turf grass for sports. Land rehabilitation is also useful as it enhance species biodiversity and limits erosion of soil by using land and water unsuitable for conventional crops. Soil effected due to secondary salinization can be reduce by many strategies to rehabilitate saline-sodic landscapes, such as scraping to remove salt crusts to allow plant establishment, drainage installation, and irrigation to leach Na+ from the root zone (Siyal et al., 2002). Use of salt‐accumulating plants which mostly belongs to family Amaranthaceae, can be suitable species for rehabilitation and revegetation for salt effected areas (Devi et al., 2008). Many halophytes including Sclerolaena longicuspis, Atriplex halimus, Cenchrus ciliaris and Lotus creticus Tecticornia pergranulata and Frankenia serpyllifolia are reported as promising species for arid rangeland rehabilitation, because of their adaptation and palatability (Shaygan et al., 2018). Biomass of plants for rehabilitation at saline degraded lands should be composed of a balanced ratio of total protein, nitrogen, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, ash and lignin (Tlili et al., 2020). Phlomis purpurea, Alternanthera bettzickiana and Limonium stocksii have great ornamental uses due to the astonishing color of their leaves and flowers. They have the ability to survive under environmental stresses (Akhzari & Aghbash, 2013; Ozturk et al., 2018). Most of the halophytes in Pakistan are usually herbs and shrubs which can grow in poor quality soils and brackish water to promote conventional irrigation system. Saline irrigation holds great potential for ensuring high pecuniary returns in saline prone areas (Panta et al., 2018).