Abstract
The mining activity is highly environmental impacting, being the excavation process and waste sterile rejects crowding the main pollution sources. The Santa Catarina Coal Basin has great importance, considering that contains 4.3 billions tons of coal (13% of the Brazilian reserve) and 6.400 hectares of degraded area. That way, the study objective was to characterize and identify the ambient impacts derivated from coal mining activities, at the Sideropolis city, SC. The base method used to evaluate was The Leopold matrix which adaptations were made according to a qualitative attribute weighting matrix to verify the significance of impacts. The interaction between two actions of the enterprise and 11 generated environmental impacts was analysed according to the attributes of frequency, extension, duration, direction and degree, both in the physical and anthropic environments. All impacts had a negative direction, where the most striking activity was the opening of the cava, which, when forming the acidic lagoon, changes the surface water quality, being described as of great importance. Therefore, recognizing the principal environment problems could help on strategies to accomplish the recovery requirements of degraded areas on this area.
Highlights
A new interest has recently emerged worldwide in the reduction of nuclear energy usage, mainly due to the Fukushima disaster, which occurred in Japan in 2011 (Costanza et al, 2011)
Based on the results found by the matrix (Figure 3), it was possible to clearly identify how harmful the activities are to the environment, based on their characteristics and importance values
In open-pit mining the landscape is remodelled due to the excavation, which aims to the pit opening
Summary
A new interest has recently emerged worldwide in the reduction of nuclear energy usage, mainly due to the Fukushima disaster, which occurred in Japan in 2011 (Costanza et al, 2011). Open pit coal mining is one of the activities that most modify the natural landscape, resulting in almost always irreversible conditions (Slonecker & Benger, 2001) In this case, it is important to note that there is a strong correlation between the physical and chemical properties of the soil (Fugaro et al, 2006). It is important to note that there is a strong correlation between the physical and chemical properties of the soil (Fugaro et al, 2006) This modification occurs mainly by the presence of sulfuric mineral waste (e.g. pyrite and marcassite) that oxidize in the presence of air, water and action of the bacterium Thiobacilus ferroxidans triggering an acidification process (Fugaro et al, 2006). This process ends up committing a great part of the water resources and the surrounding (Soares et al, 2006; Pompêo et al, 2004)
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