Large-scale mining and other extractive industries can cause dramatic changes to the landscape, and have the potential to consume, divert and pollute significant volumes of water. Increasing knowledge and awareness of the potential impacts has led to accelerating efforts to understand, model and predict the potential impacts as part of project assessment. The presence of multiple extractive projects in a region, including the super-position of new mines onto historic mine footprints, and the multiple and interacting impacts (both positive and adverse) of mines on water, ecology, economics and people over wide-ranging scales means that modelling cumulative impacts is a critical part of the challenge. Underlying challenges include modelling interactions between the geomechanical impacts, and subsurface and surface hydrology and water quality over multiple scales. These challenges apply to coal mining, metals and minerals mining and unconventional gas. We welcome submissions that report research into modelling the cumulative impacts of the extractive industries on water resources, and water-dependent ecological and socio-economic systems.
Key topics: Mining, Extractives, Water , Cumulative impacts