Project: Environmental geophysics characterisation toolkit for Queensland's mine waste (2022-2024)

Contamination of surface and ground waters from mine waste can pose environmental hazards. Whilst drilling and sampling of mine waste provides critical information on the characteristics of the material, it does not facilitate a whole-of-site understanding. There are a growing number of academic publications focused on the integration of geochemical and geophysical datasets when characterising tailings storage facilities, however, this type of approach has yet to be established in Queensland.   

Geophysical methods are useful for characterising mine waste and assessing the integrity of containment structures. Geophysical methods are indirect methods, that is, they have the capacity to acquire information without disturbing potentially hazardous materials, and they “look” beneath the surface, allowing for investigation of the internal properties and structure of minewaste.

This project seeks to define the application of these techniques and establish a data collection and processing workflow to enhance the understanding of Queensland’s mine waste.