Estimating water input in the mining industry in Brazil
A methodological proposal in a data-scarce context
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13069152 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Agnaldo Moura (0000-0003-2379-7860, Vienna University of Economics and Business), Stephan Lutter (0000-0003-0097-7535, Vienna University of Economics and Business, corresponding author), Cesar Augusto Crovador Siefert (0000-0001-8855-8946, Universidade Federal do Paraná), Nicolas Dombrowski Netto (0000-0002-9053-1918, Universidade Federal do Paraná), José Antônio Sena Do Nascimento (0000-0001-8050-3262, Centro de Tecnologia Mineral), Fernando Ferreira de Castro (0000-0002-5144-4862, Centro de Tecnologia Mineral) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Pages | 101015-101015 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Extractive Industries and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2214-790X • E-ISSN: 2214-7918 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.exis.2021.101015 |
| OpenAlex | W3217100223 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
Metal mining plays a significant role in the Brazilian economy since its foundation as an overseas colony. The rapid increase in ore extraction brings along pressures on the country’s water resources, as mining is a particularly water-intensive activity. However, site-specific data on water input and management are scarce. We propose a methodology for estimating water input in mining at a high geographical resolution. We focus on the three key metals mined in Brazil: iron, aluminum (i.e. bauxite ore), and copper, and derive water input coefficients for all mines from governmental and corporate sources as well as from the literature. We estimate that overall, the sum of the water inputs estimated for Brazilian bauxite, copper, and iron ore mining decreased by 15% from an average of 506.5±62.4 hm3 in 2014 to an average of 408.4±67.2 hm3 in 2017. The regions where most water was appropriated were Northern (Pará state) and Southeast (Minas Gerais) for iron, Northern (Pará) for aluminum, and Northern (Pará) and Central West (Goiás) for copper. We show that there are still significant consistency and data availability gaps, and that further work is still necessary to improve site-specific reporting and open access to data collected by public institutions
Archaeology · Bauxite · Context (archaeology · Copper · Copper mining · Economics · Geography · Iron ore · Mining engineering · Natural resource economics · Surface water · Water resource management · Work (physics · Chemistry · Engineering · Environmental Science · Groundwater and Watershed Analysis · Water Quality and Pollution Assessment · Water resources management and optimization · Environmental Engineering · Geology
| Highly cited | No |
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