Environmental analysis of mining operations: Dynamic tools for impact assessment

Keeping a high mineral production rate while protecting the environment requires a mining framework where several perspectives are considered and weighed up. The concept of sustainability provides just such a framework. Social and financial needs determine mineral production rates, resulting in a global demand for minerals. To ensure effective environmental protection, different tools and techniques have been developed. One of the most widespread is the so-called Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This technique is extremely useful but there are also drawbacks. For instance, subjectivity in initial value choices makes model comparison difficult. To overcome some of these problems, this paper sets out a methodology to establish an environmental analysis, focusing on the evolution of environmental impacts over time. This analysis provides a dynamic tool which could be included as part of any EIA-based techniques. The proposed methodology is general enough to apply to different mine project designs since the model includes a typical mining operation layout together with adaptive parameters. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.