Hard Rock Mine Reclamation: From Prediction to Management of Acid Mine Drainage

Hard rock mines have significant effects on the territories where they operate, through both infrastructure construction as well as resource use. Due to their extractive activities, these mines store large quantities of wastes at the surface, which can be both physically and chemically unstable. Reclamation aims to return a mine site to a satisfactory state, meaning that the site should not threaten human health or security, should not generate in the long term any contaminant that could significantly affect the surrounding environment, and should be aesthetically acceptable to communities. This book focuses on the reclamation of waste storage areas, which constitute the main source of pollution during and after mine operations, and especially issues with acid mine drainage and neutral contaminated drainage.

Features:

• Provides fundamental information and describes practical methods to reclaim mine-waste facilities
• Compares the different methods and illustrates their application at sites through case studies
• Identifies new reclamation issues and proposes solutions to address them
• Presents existing and new technologies to reclaim mine waste disposal areas from hard rock mines in different climatic conditions
• Integrates reclamation into mine operations and long term performance of techniques used through an interdisciplinary approach

With mine site reclamation a young and still emerging science, the training needs for professionals and students working in this field are huge. This book is written from an engineering point of view and in it the authors identify new reclamation issues and propose well-tested as well as innovative approaches to addressing them. Students in graduate programs focused on mines and the environment as well as professionals already working in departments related to mine site reclamation will find this book to be a valuable and essential resource.

Bruno Bussière is professor at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), where he holds the position of scientific director of the Research Institute on Mines and the Environment (RIME UQAT-Polytechnique) at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) and Chair holder of the Industrial NSERC-UQAT Chair on Mine Site Reclamation. His teaching and research activities mostly relate to mining geotechnique and hydrogeology, including constitutive and numerical modeling of unsaturated flow in soils and mine wastes, characterization of tailings and backfill behavior, passive mine water treatment, hydrogeotechnical aspects of mine wastes disposal, mine water quality prediction, mineral separation in tailings, and reclamation methods for surface disposal sites including control of acid mine drainage and contaminated neutral drainage. He has published 135 referred papers, 200 conference articles and has contributed to the training of 60 specialists. He received the 2004 CGS Colloquium award, the 2012 ADRIQ-NSERC prize for his IRC and was appointed Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2016.

Marie Guittonny-Larchevêque is a biologist and assistant professor in mine revegetation since 2013 at the research institute in mines and environment of the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Her research interests consist in apprehending plant and mine substrates’ relationships to ensure the success of mine site reclamation in the long term. She has 12 years of experience in research aiming at rehabilitating degraded sites. For the past six years, she has worked at overcoming the limitations of mine wastes to establish vegetation and at studying plant effects on the performance of mine reclamation methods, especially covers.