Book Review: Acidic Pit Lakes: The Legacy of Coal and Metal Surface Mines

Abstract

Acidic Pit Lakes: The Legacy of Coal and Metal Surface Mines, edited by Walter Geller, Martin Schultze, Bob Kleinmann, and Christian Wolkersdorfer, was recently published by Springer-Verlag (525 pp., 212 fig., 66 tab., ISBN 978-3-642-29383-2). This book can be viewed as an excellent update of the 1998 book, Acidic Mining Lakes: Acid Mine Drainage, Limnology and Reclamation, which was edited by Walter Geller, H. Klapper, and W. Salomons. This earlier book set the scene on what was then an emerging but fascinating field and synthesized a large amount of research conducted in the decommissioned lignite mines of former East Germany, as the legacy pits filled with water. Until that book was published, these acidic lake environments were rarely described in limnology textbooks or journal papers. Since the earlier book, an increasing numbers of acidic pit lakes have come into existence as legacy pits are filled with water; many of these pit have been subject to intensive studies, before, during and after filling. While much of this data continues to remain in the private sector, more and more data is being analyzed and released through journal publications. In the 2013 book, Chief Editor Walter Geller is assisted by 43 co-authors and international experts predominantly from Germany, but also from the USA, Spain, Canada, Australia, and Poland. An international network of acidic pit lake experts has been developing over the past decade, and many are indeed co-authors for this book, which succinctly outlines recent advances in our understanding of these complex systems. This new book provides a comprehensive overview of the origins, geochemistry, and limnology of pit lakes and possible remediation options. The book outlines all aspects of pit lake function— physical, chemical and biological limnology. The section on physical limnology includes descriptions of stratification and circulation, waves and currents, mixing and vertical transport in pit lakes. The section on chemical limnology includes detailed descriptions of sediment–water interactions, and iron and phosphorus cycling. Personally, I would have liked to have seen an overview of nitrogen cycling in these acidic systems also included in this section. The final section in the limnology chapter covers lake ecology, including phytoplankton, zooplankton, microbial and fungi dynamics, macrophytes, and benthic primary production. This chapter on limnology provides an excellent overview of current knowledge of pit lake processes and is very rich in data from existing pit lakes. This chapter in itself could have been the basis of a very useful book. The following two chapters outline remediation and management options and then a series of case studies from Germany, Australia, Canada, the USA, and Spain. The majority of research into pit lakes over the last decade has come from Germany, many of the authors are from Germany, and thus it is reasonable that the latter chapter is dominated by case studies from Germany, including the famous Mining Lake 111 with its plethora of superb data. The case study chapter is dominated by case studies from temperate climate regions—a shortfall that is of concern given a significant proportion of mining operations in the world are in tropical, semi-arid and arid regions. Mine water and lake management in these climate zones is particularly challenging and thus I hope that the next update from these authors includes many case studies from other climatic regions. One of the most interesting and valuable parts of this book is the chapter titled ‘‘Lessons learned, open questions and concluding remarks’’. This chapter is a very rare C. Oldham (&) School of Environmental Systems Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia e-mail: carolyn.oldham@uwa.edu.au