Ecological footprint accounting of mining areas and metal production of the world

Mining is environmentally disruptive which requires tons of earth materials to be removed and causes modification in original land cover. The processing of materials also requires huge amount of energy. In this study, we calculated the Ecological Footprint (EF) of built-up and carbon absorption land for global mining activities with a dataset provided by Werner and colleagues. We first corrected the yield factor and equivalence factor of built-up land. The life cycle inventory to calculate the EF of carbon absorption land was obtained from literatures. According to the findings, tailings storage facility, waste rock dump and riverine tailings disposal had higher EF of built-up land. EF of carbon absorption land was significantly huge, and underground mines had generally higher values than surface mines whereas surface mines had higher EF of built-up land. We also discussed some mechanisms regarding how to reduce the EF of carbon absorption land. [Display omitted]