Natural rehabilitation potential in two distinct mining areas in Mongolia
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Date
2023
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Abstract
Soil erosion in Mongolia has intensified, and the general level of soil fertility has decreased. The effects of global warming, and human activities such as grazing pastureland, mining operation, intensification of agriculture, urbanization, and road damage are the main causes of soil cover degradation. Due to the ecosystem characteristics of the geographical landlocked location within continental harsh, arid climatic conditions, there is clearly a different identification requirement in rehabilitation potential of mining areas. So, it is necessary to dig in to differentiate the possible rehabilitation characteristics on the most suitable ecosystems. And discrimination of the potentiality by the ecosystem and location makes how to achieve optimized mining rehabilitation results.
In this work, the focus is to concentrate on the natural healing process and weigh into potentiality using pyramid concept [1]. Study area and soil characteristics are considered on 2 distinct mining areas located in 2 different ecozones of Mongolian, one is in sub northern area, Ecozone III, which covers both sandy Katsanoses soil and gravelly sandy kastanozem soil. The other comparison study area is Ecozone VI, which within the desert zone the soil specially forms in gravelly and sandy features, and the vegetation becomes scarce with its both species and biomass due to its hot, dry characteristics. Kastanozem soil has more fertile components and thicker humus layer than the desert gravelly and sandy features. Natural features consist of climatological features (precipitation, temperature, wind), soil types and vegetation index data were collected and analyzed using ArcGIS software. These mining areas followed up with verification areas weighted in Khuvsgul and Southgobi areas appointed 180 and 120 points respectively. However, the potential scores on rehabilitation expenses explain active regions that the chance of adjustable value on those planned rehabilitation budget, where sustaining the soil rehabilitation stick into long term natural healing process.
These concludes that the pyramid concept should be applied to the other areas of Mongolian mining sites to enable natural rehabilitation potentiality into long term, sustainable mining rehabilitation plan.
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Keywords
Natural rehabilitation, Rehabilitation potential, Mining potentiality, Sustainable mining
Citation
@inproceedings{Tsogtsaikhan2023, title={Natural rehabilitation potential in two distinct mining areas in Mongolia}, author={Oyun-Erdene Tsogtsaikhan and Gantuya Ganbat and Martin Knippertz}, year={2023}, booktitle={Proceedings of the second International Conference on Resources and Technology (RESAT 2023)}, pages={160-174}, issn={2352-5401}, isbn={978-94-6463-318-4}, url={https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-318-4_13}, doi={10.2991/978-94-6463-318-4_13}, publisher={Atlantis Press} }