Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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permafrost melts every day at a rapid rate.
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However,
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multiple things depend on this permafrost from the
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fauna to the infrastructure in northern communities.
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The loss of this permafrost will cause
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irreversible damage to the environment and landslides.
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Two craters
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and studies have been done all over the world in northern regions and show
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that mining activities can disrupt the permafrost
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in the surrounding due to unbalanced soil.
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Their energy
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In some cases,
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simply a source of waste can cause a permafrost to
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melt once the permafrost is melted or rendered italic,
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which is a result of soil that was previously
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frozen to become thought and remain at a temperature above
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0°C.
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It will allow the contaminants from these tailing ponds to
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see through the soil and contaminate everything in its way.
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These contaminants can reach underground water reserves and be transported
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into the water resources that provide drinking water for communities.
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So how does mining affect permafrost?
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There has been research done on northern regions
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of Canada more specifically the chaotic mind project.
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They approached this by looking if tailings cause permafrost melt surrounding
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the tailing storage facility So to analyze the permafrost degradation,
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they conducted two studies or two different scenarios to um
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using the tailing stored using the
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backfilling backfilling technique which is filling
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back an old open pit that is abandoned for scenario number one,
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they they determined that the water, they
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made a water cover of five m,
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which would keep the tailings temperature between five and
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10 degrees Celsius and for serin ario number two,
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they used water to fill the pit.
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However,
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they remove the water leaving the tailings to be exposed to the air temperature
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and the initial tailings temperature for scenario two is the same as scenario one.
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And as we can show in these figures,
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there's a layer of permafrost below the pit that is lost due to the tailings.
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And this created a talic layer around the pit approximately 50 m on the sides
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of the pit and up to 160 m under the bottom of the pit.
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Other studies have been done in the northern
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regions of china on open coal cast mining
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and um underground mining on permafrost in the Qinghai Tibet plateau,
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they have discovered that open cast mining
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damages permafrost more than the underground mining.
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Since the grading permafrost will greatly of
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in fact the structural integrity of underground tunnels,
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it's an issue that's taken very seriously for the safety of the workers.
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Researchers have used models and simulations to predict the
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amount of permafrost that would melt around the pit.
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With the help of boreholes in their underground mining
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tunnel systems to attain their parameters for their simulations.
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The figure here shows the change in permafrost,
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maximum death over the lifetime of the coal mine and
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we can see that there is change over time.
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However, according to these same researchers, this change isn't um drastic.
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Um However, it is still important to take into account,
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So it's clear that permafrost is being affected by mining activities,
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but what does this mean for the mines with the loss of permafrost?
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A lot of underground tunnels will lose their structural integrity,
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endangering the lives of mind workers.
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This also means that storing tailings using the aid of
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permafrost prevent leaking will no longer be effective and contaminants
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and contaminants will leak to the surrounding ecosystems
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and lastly, with the soil becoming unstable and unsafe,
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a lot of ores and potential findings will become unattainable and unreachable,
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unreachable.
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So this is just a small fraction of what my
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research paper entails and the information that you can find
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um in this research paper. And I hope you guys will be reading the finished product.
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Thank you.