Abstract
Mining is an essential activity that supports the provision of raw materials. However, the extraction process of mining has deep environmental impacts. For this reason, restoration actions are mandatory, and monitoring is a key step in ensuring the renaturalization of affected areas. Erosion processes are one of the main problems that affect restored areas in extractive activities due to the frequently steep slopes and the difficulty of revegetating the technosols constructed using mining debris. This research aims to develop a method for determining soil losses due to water erosion in mine-restored areas by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) tools. For the study, images obtained using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in an open pit mine in the process of restoration are used, from which the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the current state of the slopes is obtained (0.10 m spatial resolution). With GIS techniques, ridges of the rills and gullies generated in the slopes are detected, whereby an estimation of a first DEM before the erosive process and a second DEM after the erosive process can be constructed. Each of these DEMs are evaluated individually in order to determine the height differences and estimate the volumetric loss. At the same time, the results are validated with the DEM derived from official mapping agencies’ airborne Lidar data (1.00 m spatial resolution), which yield consistent data in the volumetric quantification of the erosion despite the difference in spatial resolution. In conclusion, the high spatial resolution of drone images facilitated a detailed monitoring of erosive processes, obtaining data from vast and inaccessible slopes that are usually immeasurable with traditional field techniques, and altogether improving the monitoring process of mine restoration.
Highlights
Mineral resources are tremendously important to economic development in terms of raw materials and energy [1,2]
The automated detection of ridges using the proposed methodology for relief inversion is consistent with the visualization of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and its derived products
A threshold of up to 5 was used to select DEM pixels that were not affected by the effects of erosion from surface runoff (Figure 4b)
Summary
Mineral resources are tremendously important to economic development in terms of raw materials and energy [1,2]. Mining can cause severe damage to the landscape, soil and water, especially in extraction areas. Sustainable mining is a complete process that occurs during the lifespan of a mine, including the restoration of the affected land. It is crucial to monitor geotechnical risks, slope instabilities and soil losses, where action occurs in order to control key aspects, such as slope erosion [3]. Gully erosion can be defined as an erosion process in which deep channels are generated by runoff water that remove topsoil to a certain depth [5]. In a more detailed sense, gully erosion is a threshold-dependent process that is controlled by a set of geo-environmental factors [6]
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