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Environ Geol (2009) 58:205216 DOI 10.1007/s00254-008-1509-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Environmental impact assessment of open pit mining in Iran
M. Monjezi K. Shahriar H. Dehghani F. Samimi Namin
Received: 10 November 2007 / Accepted: 4 August 2008 / Published online: 26 August 2008 Springer-Verlag 2008
Abstract Mining is widely regarded as having adverse effects on environment of both magnitude and diversity. Some of these effects include erosion, formation of sinkhole, biodiversity loss and contamination of groundwater by chemical from the mining process in general and open-pit mining in particular. As such, a repeatable process to evaluate these effects primarily aims to diminish them. This paper applies Folchi method to evaluate the impact of open-pit mining in four Iranian mines that lacked previous geo-environmental assessment. Having key geologic resources, these mines are: Mouteh gold mine, Gol-e-Gohar and Chogart iron mines, and Sarcheshmeh copper mine. The environmental components can be dened as public health and safety, social relationships, air and water quality, ora and fauna hence, various impacting factors from the mining activities were estimated for each environmental component. For this purpose, each impacting factor was rst given a magnitude, based solely on the range of possible scenarios. Thereafter, a matrix of weighted factors was derived to systematically quantify
and normalize the effects of each impacting factor. The overall impact upon each individual environmental component was then calculated by summing the weighted rates. Here, Folchi method was applied to evaluate those environmental conditions. Based on the acquired results, the present paper nally concludes that amongst four case histories in Iran, Sarcheshmeh copper mine signicantly affects the environment, with critical level of air pollution there.
Keywords Environmental effects Open pit mines
Folchi method Gol-e-Gohar mine Chogart mine
Sarcheshmeh mine Mouteh mine
Introduction
The rapid growth of population along with the increased capacity of extracting natural resources around the globe has contributed in endangering the environment. As a matter of fact, due to growing mining activities, attention to the environmental problems and controlling pollution becomes unavoidable. Environmental protection therefore, is one of the most important issues in the sustainable development of a country. Currently, there are no limitations to the capacity of mine production but it is, however, necessary to maintain a suitable condition for miners as well as the general...