Potential Environmental and Social-Economic Impacts from Neglected Mining Occurrences in Victoria, Australia

摘要: Victoria has a proud history of mining which helped create some of the largest goldfield cities in Victoria including Ballarat and Bendigo. Although historic mines over the past 100+ years had substantial benefits to Victoria’s economy, they leave behind legacies such as pollution and hazards due to the historic lack of regulation and rehabilitation. This report combines multiple mine/quarry databases and categorises the mineral occurrence sites into a mining occurrence hierarchy using GIS spatial analysis. The combined mineral occurrence database is then used to find relationships and distances against different spatial maps including vegetation, water streams, population and infrastructure. The results showed that spatial analysis of neglected mines at a State scale can be useful for identifying areas that are potentially impacted by neglected mines, and can be used to prioritise further research.