Lost but Not Forgotten: Identifying Unmapped and Unlisted Environmental Hazards including Abandoned Mines

Kieran P. Young, Brad R. Murray, Leigh J. Martin and Megan L. Murray
Additional contact information
Kieran P. Young: School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Brad R. Murray: School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Leigh J. Martin: School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Megan L. Murray: School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: Environmental databases play an essential role in the management of land and communities, including mapping and monitoring environmental hazards over time (i.e., abandoned mines). Over the last century, mines have closed for many reasons, but there has been no comprehensive database of the locations of closed and abandoned mine sites kept for many regions of the world. As such, the locations of many mines have been lost from public knowledge, with no way for managers to assess the risks of land and water contamination, as well as subsidence. To address this knowledge gap, we present an integrated framework for identifying abandoned mine sites using a combination of satellite imagery, historical records, geographic evidence, and local knowledge. We tested this framework within the Newcastle, Illawarra, and Lithgow regions of NSW, Australia. We identified 61 abandoned coal mines which are currently unaccounted for in mine registries, with 56% of all mines in the Newcastle region being unmarked (N = 32), 36% in the Illawarra region (N = 22), and 20% in the Lithgow region (N = 7). These findings demonstrate that our framework has promising utility in identifying historic and unmarked environmental hazards in both national and international contexts.

Keywords: land management; contamination; community health; risk assessment; geospatial analysis; satellite imagery; mining; mines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11011/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11011/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:19:p:11011-:d:649802

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().