Ways to reduce technogenic landscape disturbances in mining production

Abstract

Abstract Iron ore mining is followed by significant disturbances of the earth’s surface caused by both iron ore mining facilities (underground mines and open pits) and disposal of mining and concentration wastes on the surface (waste and substandard ore dumps at underground mines, overburden and oxidized rock dumps at open pits, tailings storage facilities at mining and beneficiation plants). In addition, operation of mining enterprises leads to creating hundreds of kilometers of above-ground pipelines, technological roads and railroads; drilling and blasting operations at underground mines and open pits lead to seismic phenomena and geotectonic disturbances of the surface in the form of sinkholes and craters in places of underground workings. The presented scientific work aims to generalize the practice of measures to optimize landscape disturbances caused by mining and develop individual issues of arrangement and technology of reclamation of disturbed surface areas in conditions of Kryvyi Rih iron ore basin. Technogenic surface disturbances accumulated during the period of economic exploitation of the region require a comprehensive solution in two directions. The first one consists in reducing the rate of new destructive impacts on the state of the relief by switching from extensive methods of deposit exploitation to all-round intensification of production (introduction of low-waste technologies, concentration waste re-treatment, oxidized ores processing, transition to technologies of internal dumping). The second one involves optimization of already formed landscape disturbances through reclamation. It is recommended to implement a number of methods of improving individual technogenic landscape formations by engineering and biological methods.