The Impact of Mining on the Landscape

The Impact of Mining on the Landscape
Author: Renata Dulias
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319295411

This book investigates the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB), one of the oldest and largest mining areas not only in Poland but also in Europe. Using uniform research methods for the whole study area, it also provides a summary of the landscape transformations. Intensive extraction of hard coal, zinc and lead ores, stowing sands and rock resources have caused such extensive transformations of landscape that it can be considered a model anthropogenic relief. The book has three main focuses: 1) Identifying anthropogenic forms of relief related to mining activity and presenting them from a spatial, genetic and age perspective; 2) Determining the changes in the morphometric characteristics of relief and the conditions for matter circulation in open systems (drainage basins) and closed systems (land-locked basins) caused by the extraction of mineral resources; and 3) Estimating the extent of anthropogenic denudation using two different methods based on raw-material output and morphometric analysis. In Poland, no other mining area has undergone such intensive mining activity as the Upper Silesian Coal Basin during the last half century. Its share in the total extraction of mineral resources was as high as 32%. The total extraction of hard coal in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin from the mid-18th century until 2009 was the sixth largest in the world, and the permanent, regional effects of mining anthropopressure on the relief are among the most severe in the world. The anthropogenic denudation rate in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, as well as the Ruhr Coal Basin (Ruhr District) and the Ostrava-Karvina Coal Basin, ranges from several dozen up to several hundred times higher than the rate of natural denudation, irrespective of the calculation method used. It would take the natural denudation processes tens of thousands of years to remove the same amount of material from the substratum as that removed through human mining activity.

Landscapes of Extraction

Landscapes of Extraction
Author: Betsy Fahlman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9783777437538

Works from an exhibition that proves mining can be as sublime as it is destructive. Landscapes of Extraction explores the art of mining, which completely transformed the American West. These landscapes of enterprise altered the natural environment on a spectacular scale, with open pit mines, coal tipples, and oil rigs. Yet artists have often found these scenes beautiful, even sublime. The four scholarly essays presented here explore how artists have portrayed the mining industry in the American West. The multiple landscapes created by large-scale mining inspired these artworks: the mines themselves, the towns that grew up around them, and the miners and their families who lived and worked there. The industry has shaped communities and landscapes throughout the West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. Landscapes of Extraction explores how a powerful regional narrative became a fundamental element of national identity and played out on a vast geographical scale.

Mining the Landscape

Mining the Landscape
Author: Geraldine Mate
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-09-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031129067

Mining was one of the primary elements of colonial enterprise in Australia and a factor in movement on colonial frontiers. In the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, mining—particularly of gold—saw transformations of the land itself, as well as in the way that people working in mining engaged with the landscape around them. Landscape archaeology provides a theoretical perspective that allows an articulation of how people created and understood the place in which they lived and worked. The impact of and narrative surrounding gold mining has meant that it has long been a focus of study, both historical and archaeological. The archaeology of mining has traditionally fallen under the umbrella of industrial archaeology, with analyses based on historical, economic and technological evidence. However this is changing. From an industrial focus, examining the remnants of mines and associated processing equipment, archaeology has progressed towards understandings of the social aspects of mining, recognising that people, not just equipment, occupied these landscapes. Nevertheless, there remains a separation between industrial/technology-based studies and purely social/ household-based archaeological studies—a division that overlooks the integration of home and livelihood. This work addresses these very challenges, using a landscape-based approach that articulates a nuanced, meaning-ladened and experienced mining landscape. Integrating the social and the industrial, the case study of Mount Shamrock, a gold-mining town in Queensland, Australia, demonstrates how this methodology can enhance our understanding of the past. The work presents an integration of social and industrial perspectives in a mining settlement, and provides an exemplar in the application of landscape theory to Australian historical archaeology. These concepts and approaches, developed in an Australian context, are of universal interest.

Mercury and the Making of California

Mercury and the Making of California
Author: Andrew Scott Johnston
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2013-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1457183994

Exploring the development of California and the relationship between the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emerging ethnic identities and communities in California, Mercury and the Making of California brings mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in their defining roles in the development of the American West. In this pioneering study, Andrew Johnston examines the history of California’s mercury-mining industry—and its defining role in the development of the American West. Mercury was crucial to refining gold and silver; therefore, its production and use were vital to creating and securing power and wealth in the west. The first industrialized mining in California, mercury mining had its own particular organization and structure shaped by powers first formed within the Spanish Empire, transformed by British imperial ambitions, and manipulated by groups made wealthy and powerful by controlling it. In addition, the landscapes of work and camp and the relations among the many groups—Mexicans, Chileans, Spanish, British, Irish, Cornish, American, and Chinese—throughout the industry’s history illustrate the complex history of race and ethnicity in the American West. Combining rich documentary sources with a close examination of the existing physical landscape, Andrew Johnston explores both the detail of everyday work and life in the mines and the larger economic and social structures in which mercury mining was enmeshed, revealing the significance of mercury mining to Western history.

Mining in a Medieval Landscape

Mining in a Medieval Landscape
Author: Stephen Rippon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This book explores an industry that was of profound importance both in terms of the local economy and the history of mining nationally, but is long forgotten: the late medieval royal silver mines at Bere Ferrers in the Tamar Valley. The Bere Ferrers silver mines employed up to 400 men, mining on a scale and at depths not previously possible, and changed forever the way that mining was carried out in medieval Britain.

Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes

Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes
Author: Mark Tibbett
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2015-08-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0643106375

Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes explores the interface between geology and botany, and mining and conservation. Many areas of unusual geology that contain ore-bearing bodies also support unique ecological communities of plants and animals. Increasing demand to exploit rich mineral deposits can lead to a conflict between mining and conservation interests in such landscapes. This book brings together experts in the field of mining and conservation to grapple with this pressing issue and to work toward a positive outcome for all. Chapters are grouped into four themes: Introduction, Concepts and Challenges; Endemism in Ironstone Geosystems; Progress in Bauxite Mining; and Ways Forward. The book focuses on natural and semi-natural ecosystems, where landscape beauty, biodiversity and conservation value are at their highest measure and the mineral wealth they contain can bring affluence of regional or even national importance. Examples of conflicts ranging from threatened floristic endemics to human ecology are included, from Africa, the Americas and Australasia. Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes is an important reference for environmental managers, NGOs, restoration ecologists, academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students of ecology and environmental studies, conservation biologists, as well as mine managers, mining environmental specialists, consultants, regulators and relevant government departments.

Mining Archaeology in the American West

Mining Archaeology in the American West
Author: Donald L. Hardesty
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2010-07
Genre: History
ISBN:

Mining played a prominent role in the shaping and settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. Following the discovery of the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, mining became increasingly industrialized, changing mining technology, society, and culture throughout the world. In the wake of these changes Nevada became an important mining region, with new people and technologies further altering the ways mining was pursued and miners interacted. Historical archaeology offers a research strategy for understanding mining and miners that integrates three independent sources of information about the past: physical remains, documents, and oral testimony. Mining Archaeology in the American West explores mining culture and practices through the microcosm of Nevada’s mining frontier. The history of mining technology, the social and cultural history of miners and mining societies, and the landscapes and environments of mining are topics examined in this multifocus research. In this updated and expanded edition of the seminal work on mining in Nevada, Donald Hardesty brings scholarship up to the present with important new research and insights into how people, technology, culture, architecture, and landscape changed during this period of mining history.

Revealing the Invisible Mine

Revealing the Invisible Mine
Author: Emilia Skrzypek
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2020-10-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789208572

Exploring the social complexities of the Frieda River Project in Papua New Guinea, this book tells the story of local stakeholder strategies on the eve of industrial development, largely from the perspective of the Paiyamo – one of the project’s so-called ‘impact communities’. Engaging ideas of knowledge, belief and personhood, it explains how fifty years of encounters with exploration companies shaped the Paiyamo’s aspirations, made them revisit and re-examine their past, and develop new strategies to move towards a better, more prosperous future.

Mining California

Mining California
Author: Andrew C. Isenberg
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2010-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374707200

An environmental History of California during the Gold Rush Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here's how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California's rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile—rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California's forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir's insight—"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe"—to the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest.

Assessment, Restoration and Reclamation of Mining Influenced Soils

Assessment, Restoration and Reclamation of Mining Influenced Soils
Author: Jaume Bech
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2017-09-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0128097299

Assessment, Restoration and Reclamation of Mining Influenced Soils covers processes operating in the environment as a result of mining activity, including the whole spectra of negative effects of anthropopressure and the environment, from changes in soil chemistry, changes in soil physical properties, geomechanical disturbances, and mine water discharges. Mining activity and its waste are an environmental concern. Knowledge of the fate of potentially harmful elements and their effect on plants and the food chain, and ultimately on human health, is still being understood. Therefore, there is a need for better knowledge on the origin, distribution, and management of mine waste on a global level. This book provides information on hazard assessment and remediation of the disturbed environment, including stabilization of contaminated soils and phytoremediation, and will help scientists and public authorities formulate answers to the daily challenges related to the restoration of contaminated land. - Provides a thorough overview of the processes operating on mining-devastated areas, as well as origin, distribution, and deactivation of harmful elements - Includes outcomes and recommendations of the Global Mining Initiative that are widely regarded as the code of conduct in the minerals industry - Contains global case studies that elucidate various aspects of assessment and restoration of mine-contaminated land