Monitoring of Abandoned Open Pit Mines

Surface mining activities in Europe are estimated to cover a large area and range from large open-cast coal and base metal mines, to much smaller aggregate, industrial minerals, and building materials quarries. In this paper we suggest that the availability of Landsat TM for Earth observation allows the collection of environmental and mine-related data for use in the planning and undertaking of mine restoration work on cost-effective basis. The advantage is that these data are acquired digitally and can be easily processed and utilized in various information formats. For verification of the results spectrometric measurements of samples from test sites are performed.
The spectral data from three different sources airborne, field and laboratory measurements are presented. The airborne data used in the developed models are taken from Landsat TM acquired in June 2000. Spectral data are obtained with a field spectrometer working in visible range. The laboratory measurements of minerals, rocks and vegetation are carried out with a multi-channel spectrometer working in the visible and NIR spectral range. The field data are collected in non-operating open pit mine and slag dump. Chemical analysis of the collected samples is made.
Two- and three-component linear models for estimation of the mineral composition of an open pit are created using satellite data over the same area. Further regression and cluster analysis for distinguishing class covers as dump and open mine is intended. As a future work we consider the development of these models including more minerals, rocks and soils.