Estimation of soil erosion and sediment yield from mine tailing dumps using GIS: a case study at the Samgwang mine, Korea

Abstract

This paper presents a Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based method for the estimation of soil erosion and sediment yield from mine tailing dumps at abandoned mining areas. A region of 21.27 km2 in size around the Samgwang mine in Korea was selected as a study area. GIS data sets (i.e. a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), a soil map and a land cover map) and the mean annual rainfall over 30 years recorded from the nearest observatory were used to create factor layers for calculating the mean annual rate of soil erosion using the universal soil loss equation model. The watershed areas were extracted from the DEM using hydrological analysis tools in GIS. The concept of sediment delivery ratio was used to determine the sediment yield from mine tailing dumps during storm events. As a result, the soil erosion and sediment yield from mine tailing dumps in the study area were calculated as 75.63–350.24 tons yr− 1 and 40.40–187.64 tons yr− 1 respectively.