Green Scenarios: Mining Industry Responses to Environmental Challenges of the Anthropocene Epoch

Book excerpt: This book aims to present an alternative based on natural processes and an environmental approach to post-excavation site management, e.g., post-coal mining heaps. These sites are places where various mineral excavation by-products are collected. Nevertheless, some post-mineral excavation sites are oligotrophic, terrestrial, wetland, and water habitat islands, providing unique biodiversity enrichment in the landscape. These oligotrophic mineral habitats are essential in over-fertilized, eutrophic, agricultural and urban-industry surroundings. Some post-mineral excavation sites are places where the wildlife can develop and support the functional processes of novel ecosystems. Implementing the newest biogeochemical and comprehensive knowledge into urban-industry landscape management will help to establish the ecosystem’s processes and environmental functioning. There are several post-industrial sites in Europe where the wildlife areas developed due to natural processes, are becoming wildlife hotspots in densely populated urban-industry areas. In this respect, many of the oligotrophic mineral terrestrial, wetland, and water habitats of anthropogenic origin should not be categorized as environmentally dangerous and undergo economic utility-focused reclamation. Facing the actual environmental constraints of the Anthropocene Epoch, the book’s chapters presenting the natural basics and perquisites of the environmental ecosystem mosaics, will be interesting for a broad range of environmentalists (scientists and students), miners, economists, and sociologists.