There is gold in them hills: Predicting potential acid mine drainage events through the use of chemometrics

Daniel Cozzolino; Shaneel Chandra; Jessica Roberts; Aoife Power; Piumie Rajapaksha; Nicole Ball; Russell Gordon; James Chapman

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.063

There is gold in them hills: Predicting potential acid mine drainage events through the use of chemometrics

Sci Total Environ. 2018 Apr 1:619-620:1464-1472. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.063. Epub 2017 Nov 29.

Authors

Daniel Cozzolino¹, Shaneel Chandra¹, Jessica Roberts¹, Aoife Power¹, Piumie Rajapaksha¹, Nicole Ball¹, Russell Gordon¹, James Chapman²

Affiliations

¹ The Agri-Chemistry Group, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Queensland 4701, Australia.
² The Agri-Chemistry Group, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Queensland 4701, Australia. Electronic address: j.chapman@cqu.edu.au.

PMID: 29734622
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.063

Abstract

Disused mines and mining legacy require significant manpower to ameliorate the contaminated environmental surroundings following their disbanding coupled with extraordinary funding to manage these issues. Water (pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductance, metals, sulphate) and total suspended solids (TSS) quality are environmental parameters that are affected by legacy mining activity and often require monitoring and rapid response if events (e.g. rainfall) occur which might affect the surrounding areas. In this study, we have monitored a famous mine site in Queensland, Australia for a number of water and sediment parameters known to be associated with acid mine drainage. This study performed analysis of water and sediment over three years, as well as rainfall data. Principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) regression was undertaken to investigate the data obtained. It was found that the use of PCA can predict the effect of year and site on the environmental influence of the abandoned mine site, based on the combination of chemical properties and meteorological data.

Keywords: Contamination; Mining; Monitoring; Water quality.