Summary

This review discusses the principles of geomorphology as applied to mining and reclamation. Links to software, online courses, and a number of papers related to geomorphology from the United States, Australia, and Pakistan are given.

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INTRODUCTION

The only rule you need to reclaim your mine site in accordance with the principles of geomorphology is if you don't see it in nature, don't do it.

I am indebted for this wisdom to Nicholas Bugosh of Carlson Software. At the SME meeting in Salt Lake City in 2008, he kindly spent time showing me how his software can be used to incorporate geomorphic perspectives and principles into the design of mine reclamation landscapes and surface water networks. I write more of his software in this review.

By way of further introduction, let me confess an utter fascination with geomorphology as a pure science-I read most anything about it I lay my hands on. I am not an expert, so best refer to the links I provide here for the details and the experts. If you can help me make this a better piece and source of information for the mining industry, I would appreciate your input.

UMTRA BACKGROUND

By way of background, I admit to great sympathy with the geomorphic approach to design of mined land reclamation works. Recently I visited three uranium mill tailings piles in Colorado closed in accordance with the design criterion: stability for 1,000 years to the extent reasonable, and at any rate for 200 years. A long time ago I walked the lands of the southwest with a professional geomorphologist as we sought to characterize the landforms, erosion processes, and changes of topography in the last 10,000 years and tried to apply these observations to the prediction of the next 1,000 years of topographic change. We then formulated the conceptual designs for the 24 piles that constitute the Title I UMTRA Project.

Our ideas and approaches did not gain currency outside the uranium tailings remediation arena because of concern for the costs of the works we designed and constructed. And this is understandable. But the tide seems to have changed: now we see British Columbia write about wrap-around waste piles, and O'Kane engineers promoting natural geomorphic shapes for their clients' mine waste disposal facility closure. And the geomorphic approach has a new and profound application in the Oil Sands-the difference is a move away from the requirement for long-term geomorphic stability to an even more profound application of geomorphic response equilibrium. I quote: "It is preferable to create a mature landscape on mine closure, so that the expected rate of change will be comparable to the reclaimed landscape in geologic time."