Siberian State Aerospace University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia:

I. V. Zenkov, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, zenkoviv@mail.ru

Annually, mineral mining process handles a few billion tones of rocks on our planet Earth. Opencast mining inflicts the most severe ecological damage. The generalized experience gained in recovery of mining ecology in foreign countries is indicative of the worldwide nature of this challenge. In the territory of the North America continent, from the Arctic Canada to the subtropics in the state of Ohio, ecologists investigate reduction in species diversity of plant communities as a result of opencast mining-induced impact and develop measures aimed at expansion of flora diversity. In the South America, local ecologists study recovery of plant ecosystems at gold mine dumps. To this effect, a non-conventional approach based on the data on natural habitats of tropical ants on the dumps is applied. In Africa, in the areas of large-scale opencast copper mining, the scope of the studies encompasses growing conditions of a rare endamic plant. It finally appears that this species of plant can effectlvely make large settlements on the mining landscapes with soil with the high copper content. On the Asian contentment of Australia, ecologies focus on mining-disturbed land reclamation after opencast mining of coals and bauxites, and handle environmental issues associated with the recovery of aquatic biotas in man-made reservoirs. In Europe the historical confrontation of the society and mining industry is dramatically strong. The environmental issues have become extremely acute in the recent decades in view of land pressure, dense population in the European countries and high concentration of industry. The mining-induced ecological issues are studied and sufficiently effectively treated in oil shale development, as well in large-scale opencast mining of sand-and-gravel, marble and coal deposits. The review of the scientific researches in the area of enhancement of the environmental activity efficiency in the field of mineral mining shows that the Earth biosphere shells on all continents are under close scrutinity of ecology experts, the goal and objective of which is minimization of the environmental impact of the mineral mining and processing industry.

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