Estimation of water volume in abandoned open mines by remotely sensed data

Abandoned open pit mines create serious ecological risk for the region of their location. This is valid especially for the quality of the water since the rainfalls together with underground waters fill the open pit and form water body with different depth. This water as a rule has very high concentration of the metals in it and is highly contaminated. One example for such opencast, inactive copper mine is Medet located in the central part of Bulgaria started for exploitation 50 years ago and being the largest in Europe at the moment. In the surrounding area of it after autumn and spring rains there are many cases reported for water pollution by heavy metals such as arsenic, copper, cadmium in the rivers running close to this open pit mine. This justifies the need for long term and sustainable monitoring of the area of the water basin of this unused mine in order to estimate its acid drainage. The imaging spectroscopy combined with is-situ investigations is proved to provide reliable results about the area of the water table and the water volume in it. In the course of this study we have investigated historical data gathered by remote sensing which allowed us to make conclusions about the year behavior of this area. The team expects that the results of this research will help in the rehabilitation process of this idle mine and will provide the local authorities engaged in water quality monitoring with a tool to estimate the possible damage caused to the local rivers.