Using airborne hyperspectral data to characterize the surface pH and mineralogy of pyrite mine tailings

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Highlights

  • Acid mine drainage mineral maps were generated from airborne hyperspectral imagery.

  • Tailings mineral maps were created from endmember and unmixing analysis of HyMAP imagery.

  • Predictive pH map was compared with mineral maps and relate merits are discussed.

Abstract

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a key concern of the mining industry due to its impact on the quality of water and soils surrounding mine waste deposits. Acid mine drainage derives from the oxidation of metal sulphides, e.g. pyrite (FeS2), exposed to oxygen and water. The leachate acidity is capable of releasing heavy metals contained in the mining waste rock, which can affect water quality and lead to metal enrichment in sediments and potentially resulting in ecosystem degradation. Predicting tailings leachate pH is key to the management of sulfide-bearing mine wastes and is an emerging remote sensing application with limited studies having been realized. Such a capability would supplement traditional methods (i.e. ground surveys) that are challenging to implement due to the extent and large volume of mine waste.

This study reports regional scale tailings mineral maps generated from airborne hyperspectral information of the Sotiel-Migollas complex in Spain and pinpoints sources of AMD. The extraction of spectral endmembers from imagery revealed twenty six endmembers for tailings material that represent mostly mineral mixtures. From these, eleven spectral groups were defined, each encompassing minor variations in mineral mixtures. The mineral maps resulting from the use of these endmembers for the detailed investigation of four tailings serve as indicators of the metal, sulphate, and pH levels of the AMD solution at the time of mineral precipitation. Predicted mineralogy was assessed using spectra from samples collected in the field and associated X-ray diffraction measurements.

We also discuss the relative merits of the minerals maps of this study and soil leachate pH maps that we previously reported for the same locality using the same airborne data. The pH maps tend to provide predictions consistent with the mineralogy predicted from the mineral maps and the field and laboratory evidence. The pH maps offer information on the pH conditions of the tailings thus giving an insight on the different types of oxidation reactions that may occur.

Introduction

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a key concern of mining industry due to its impact on the quality of water and soils surrounding mine waste deposits. Acid mine drainage derives from the oxidation of metal sulphides, e.g. pyrite (FeS2), exposed to oxygen and water (Singer and Stumm, 1970). Pyrite can be found within waste rock dumps, ore stock piles and tailings of many mines. During the production of AMD, iron and sulphur from pyrite are oxidized generating sulphuric acid leachate. The leachate acidity is capable of releasing heavy metals contained in the waste rock affecting water quality and leading to metal enrichment in sediments. This phenomenon is amplified by the rock crushing and grinding process because oxygen has greater access to the pyrite grains.

Reaction pathways from the oxidation of pyrite lead to the formation of a suite of secondary minerals (e.g. copiapite, jarosite, schwertmannite, goethite, and hematite) (Singer and Stumm, 1970, Kleinmann et al., 1981) stable under a range of pH conditions (Fig. 1). Secondary iron-bearing minerals present diagnostic absorption features at visible and short wave infrared wavelengths (0.4–2.5 μm) (Cloutis et al., 2006, Crowley et al., 2003, Montero et al., 2005) and are thus amenable to detection via imaging spectroscopy. The direct detection of pyrite from spectral observations is less evident than that of secondary iron-bearing minerals because pyrite displays low reflectance, saturated Fe-absorptions, and is typically coated by oxidation products (Swayze et al., 1996). Mineral mapping in mine tailings has been investigated through imaging spectroscopy for more than a decade (Swayze et al., 1996, Swayze et al., 2000, Farrand and Harsanyi, 1997, Ferrier, 1999, Lopez-Pamo et al., 1999, Dalton et al., 2000, Kemper and Sommer, 2002, Ong and Cudahy, 2002, Williams et al., 2002, Ong et al., 2003a, Ong et al., 2003b, Shang et al., 2002, Sares et al., 2004, Montero et al., 2005, Rockwell et al., 2005, Riaza et al., 2011a, Riaza et al., 2011b, Riaza et al., 2012). Riaza et al., 2011a, Riaza et al., 2011b, Riaza et al., 2012 undertook mineral detection from airborne and field spectral data for a suite of locations in the Iberian belt. They also undertook simulations of satellite data to assess the potential of mineral mapping with the upcoming EnMAP hyperspectral satellite system. A number of studies report a pattern in the spatial distribution of minerals in tailings namely a central zone of pyrite with low soil pH transitioning outwards to minerals formed in gradually more neutral pH conditions (i.e. hematite) (Montero et al., 2005, Rockwell et al., 1999, Rockwell et al., 2000, Rockwell et al., 2005, Swayze et al., 1996, Swayze et al., 2000). This zonation pattern suggests a decrease of potential acid mine drainage as a function of the distance from a pyrite rich ore zone.

Predicting tailings leachate pH using imaging spectroscopy is an emerging remote sensing application with limited studies having been realized by Ong and Cudahy (2002), Ong et al. (2003a), Sares et al. (2004), Williams et al. (2002) and Zabcic et al. (2009). Such a capability would supplement traditional methods (i.e. ground surveys) that are challenging to implement due to the extent and large volume of mine waste.

This study reports regional scale mineral maps for pyritic mine tailings generated from remote sensing spectral information to characterize tailings of the Sotiel-Migollas complex in Spain and pinpoints sources of AMD. We present a detailed investigation of four tailings from the Sotiel-Migollas complex, generating mineral maps from airborne hyperspectral imagery that are assessed using spectra from samples collected in the field and associated X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. In Zabcic et al. (2009) we used the same spectral imagery to generate maps of soil leachate pH. Thus here discuss these soil pH maps in the context of the mineral maps generated in this study along with the relative merits of both map products. Lastly, we examine spatial patterns in image maps that can be used to monitor the impact of mine waste over time, and help detect contamination in the surrounding environment through filtration, spillover or runoff that cannot always be detected on the ground. Such monitoring can support efforts of decision makers to understand the spatial extent of high-risk areas and prioritize possible remediation activities.

Section snippets

Study area

The Sotiel-Migollas mine complex is located in the vicinity of the towns of Sotiel-de-Coronada and Calanas in the region of Andévalo, province of Andalucia, South-West Spain (Fig. 2). The mine complex includes the processing plant, two tailings ponds, three major waste rock tailings, and various minor areas of rock waste or tailings.

The mine is situated in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB), which is considered the largest volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit in the world. The IPB extents for

Airborne spectral measurements

Airborne hyperspectral data (HyMap) were acquired on August 14, 2004 and June 17, 2005 to coincide with field campaigns. HyMap has 126 spectral bands covering the 0.45–2.48 μm infrared region with contiguous spectral coverage (except in the atmospheric water vapour bands), and full width at half maximum between 13 and 17 nm. The acquisition covered a maximum area of 97 km2 between Northing 4151550 and 4173316 and Easting 680906 and 696357 (Fig. 2). The pre-processing of the imagery included a

Extraction of image endmembers and labelling

The generation of final mineral maps was conducted with the June 2005 HyMap reflectance imagery. Pixels occupied by vegetation were first removed from the image by calculating the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (Rouse et al., 1973) and using a minimum threshold of 0.3. Spectral endmembers were then extracted for the remaining image pixels using the spatial-spectral endmember extraction (SSEE) algorithm of Rogge et al. (2007). This algorithm was developed to improve the detection

Mineral interpretation derived from laboratory spectra of sediment samples

The mineralogy interpreted from laboratory spectra served to guide the interpretation of image endmembers extracted from airborne data. Table 2 reports the mineralogy interpreted from laboratory spectra of 78 samples. Most encompass mineral mixtures, since the mine tailings are intimate mixtures of minerals. Sixty seven samples have one or more dominant minerals (shown in bold) including hematite (18), goethite (11), pyrite (8), ferrihydrite (7), schwertmannite (7), and jarosite (5).

The

Predictive pH maps and links to mineral maps

In Zabcic et al. (2009) our laboratory investigation of pH predictive models based on samples led us to explore a pH predictive model using all 126 available HyMap bands. Applying this model to the validation set for the HyMap imagery gave a r2 of 0.71 and a RMSE of 0.77 (Zabcic et al., 2009) comparable to a model derived from the FieldSpec FR data.

Predictive pH maps obtained by applying this model to the HyMap imagery reveals very low pH values as seen in Fig. 5. Overall, the pH values

Conclusions

The extraction of spectral endmembers from imagery revealed 26 endmembers for tailings material that represent mostly mineral mixtures. From these, eleven spectral groups were defined, each encompassing minor variations in mineral mixtures. Each of the ten groups was dominated by one of the following minerals: copiapite, goethite, hematite, jarosite, halotrichite, pickeringite, pyrite, rozenite, schwertmannite, and szomolnokite. A distinctive mineral zonation pattern is observed around the

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a discovery research grant to B. Rivard from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant 194260. HyMap imagery and field work was provided and supported by German Aerospace Center (DLR).

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