Statistical analysis of tailings ponds in China

Abstract

While tailings wastes have attracted public concern in China, the knowledge of their numbers, distribution, land occupation, perimeter, and altitude is incomplete. Based on statistics and geographic information system (GIS) method, the present study investigated 5189 of tailings ponds (TPs) in order to understand the present situation of tailings in China. Overall, this study revealed that the occupied land of TPs is about 1884.0 km2, average altitude is 699.4 m, and the strip between the tailings wastes and soil accumulated to 14,674.4 km. This is harmful to the security of closed biomes community. Besides, TPs are widely scattered, especially, the distribute density which ranges from 0.009 to 0.05/km2 are located in the northern Hebei Province, Liaodong Peninsula, Shandong Peninsula and western Henan province. In terms of watershed for TPs, the ascending order is Huaihe River, Heilongjiang River, Pearl River, Liaohe River, Yellow River, Yangtze River, Haihe River; and the land usage is Huaihe River < Pearl River < Liaohe River < Heilongjiang River < Yangtze River < Haihe River < Yellow River. In a nutshell, tailings wastes should be considered a huge environmental threat in China.