Abstract
Mining activities impact on the territorial system in various ways, affecting its environmental and socio-economic components. Specific evaluation tools can support decision-making processes in the context of the sustainable planning and management of mining activities. Within the evaluation procedures of mining activities, a growing interest in the analysis of Ecosystem Services (ES) is emerging. ES refer to the benefits that the natural system delivers to society, linking the health of ecosystems and human well-being. Starting from a real-world case related to the adoption of the Regional Plan of Mining Activities (PRAE) of the Piedmont region (Northern Italy), the paper aims to explore the ES valuation by considering three different mining quarries. The state of the art of the basins is compared with alternative planning scenarios from the point of view of the ES produced. The valuation is developed through GIS and the Simulsoil software, detecting the biophysical benefits produced and estimating their economic performance. The simulation results can be used to support the formulation of planning strategies, estimating the trade-offs in terms of competitive land-use values. The study also demonstrates that the integration of ES into Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) can produce a comprehensive impact assessment of a mining project, guaranteeing the protection and valorisation of the environmental system.
Highlights
The current century is defined as the Anthropocene era [1]
In light of the obtained results, the Ecosystem Services Approach (ESA) demonstrate fruitful potentialities in the context of environmental planning and management and envisioning new research directions for the mine regional planning. This study illustrates both the methodology of the ESA through a review of the literature related to the mining field and the application of Ecosystem Services (ES) evaluation for three different quarries in the province of Turin (Italy)
Based on the results obtained in this application, it is possible to assert that the application of the ESA allowed the investigation of the potential impact that can be generated by different scenarios of expansion of the original surface of the three quarries investigated
Summary
Human actions and the consumption of non-renewable resources generate pressure on the environment, impacting on its high vulnerability and fragility [2] Despite their fundamental role in economic development, mining activities represent one of the main sources of human impact on the environment and ecosystem components, both during their life cycle and after their closure. The sustainable development of mining is one of the main challenges of the present day, in order to find an equilibrium between the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This equilibrium has a particular significance in the context of mining activities, as it directly addresses both the way of acquiring natural resources and their processing. The latest report SNPA [9]
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