Statistical analysis of tailings ponds in China

Highlights

• 5189 tailings ponds in China have been discussed in this paper. Especially, average altitude of tailings ponds is 699.4 m, the occupied land is 1884.0 km², and the strip between the tailings wastes and soil are accumulated to 14674.4 km.

• The tailings ponds were widely distributed throughout the country, especially, highest horizontal distribution density occurs in north Hebei province, with a mean density of >0.02/per km².

• The horizontal and vertical distribution of tailings ponds in the watershed was discussed.

Abstract

While tailings wastes have attracted public concern in China, the knowledge of their numbers, distribution, land occupation, perimeter, and altitude is incomplete. Based on statistics and geographic information system (GIS) method, the present study investigated 5189 of tailings ponds (TPs) in order to understand the present situation of tailings in China. Overall, this study revealed that the occupied land of TPs is about 1884.0 km², average altitude is 699.4 m, and the strip between the tailings wastes and soil accumulated to 14,674.4 km. This is harmful to the security of closed biomes community. Besides, TPs are widely scattered, especially, the distribute density which ranges from 0.009 to 0.05/km² are located in the northern Hebei Province, Liaodong Peninsula, Shandong Peninsula and western Henan province. In terms of watershed for TPs, the ascending order is Huaihe River, Heilongjiang River, Pearl River, Liaohe River, Yellow River, Yangtze River, Haihe River; and the land usage is Huaihe River < Pearl River < Liaohe River < Heilongjiang River < Yangtze River < Haihe River < Yellow River. In a nutshell, tailings wastes should be considered a huge environmental threat in China.

Introduction

The tailings ponds (TPs) are the facilities to store mines wastes from mining operations. These mining wastes are the major contaminants in the world, and ranked 18th among the most important public hazards (Xie et al., 2009). In recent decades, mining activities have intensified in China and produced huge amounts of tailings wastes. Hence, it is a major concern for its heavy metal pollution (Liu et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2016; Yao et al., 2016), tailings ecological restoration (Dacal et al., 2019; Huang et al., 2011; Le et al., 2016), chemical weathering and tailings CO₂ sequestration (Li et al., 2011; Tang, 2017; Van et al., 2015).

Nevertheless, existing studies are still inadequate in many ways. Firstly, there are insufficient reliable data that could reflect the fundamental feature of TPs in China, and the amounts of TPs in China are still uncertain (Table 1). Secondly, few studies examined the tailings wastes across the entire China, but merely reported regional issues in Jiaodong peninsula (Zhou et al., 2017), Qinlin orogenic belt (Qiang, 2013; Wang et al., 2017) in recent years. To this end, this paper intends to focus on the primary data (distribution, altitude, land occupation, perimeter) of TPs in China. The idea is to reveal their basic features, and ultimately attract attention from the public and government authorities in China.