Title: Environmental monitoring and the geospatial sprawl of historic mining legacies in Australia

Authors: Nicholas Metherall; Talei Caucau

Addresses: The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600 Australia; University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus Suva, Fiji ' University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus Suva, Fiji; The University of Southern Queensland, West St, Darling Heights QLD 4350, Australia

Abstract: Mining legacies refer to the lasting environmental, social and public health impacts of abandoned, orphan and derelict mine sites. The spatial extent of these lasting legacies of contaminants originating from abandoned mines often overlap with both Indigenous areas and surface-groundwater ecosystems. This study investigates case studies including the Ranger Uranium Mine in the Northern Territory and Captains Flat (Lake George Mine) in New South Wales. This paper overlays geospatial layers of mining, indigenous areas and surface-groundwater data. The collation sheds light on the geospatial sprawl of mining legacies in Australia and latent pathways of contamination through key water bodies including the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) and the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). The study also overlaid this sprawl of mining legacies over additional map layers relating to the Murray Darling River Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN). This paper provides a critical review of the existing research and datasets in this field.

Keywords: mining legacies; geospatial; indigenous; abandoned mines; water contamination; environmental monitoring; Australia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSS.2021.118139

International Journal of Society Systems Science, 2021 Vol.13 No.3, pp.201 - 218

Received: 09 Jun 2020
Accepted: 28 Sep 2020
Published online: 13 Oct 2021 *

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