Natural Resources Extraction: Stressors and Impact Management - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 139

5
Natural Resources Extraction: Stressors
and Impac t Management
5.1 Introduction
The geoenvironmental natural capital , which refers to the natural resources and processes, such
as the biogeochemical cycles in the geoenvironment, that have or provide value to humans,
can be considered to comprise two major categories: (1) renewable natural resources and
(2) nonrenewable natural resources. Renewable natural resources include living resources,
such as forests, plants, wildlife, marine and other aquatic species, etc., and “nonliving”
resources, such soil and water. Biodiversity, as a natural resource (see Section 1.2.2) is not
within the purview of this topic and is therefore not included in this discussion of the natural
capital in the geoenvironment. The basis for classiication as a renewable natural resource is
the ability of the resource to regenerate, replenish, or renew itself within a period from onset
of initial resource harvesting to onset of repeat harvesting. It follows that if the resource is
allowed to regenerate itself fully in the “between-harvest” period, it can be viewed as a sus-
tainable resource. Failure to do so will render the renewable natural resource into the sub
category of exhaustible (renewable) natural resource. In reality, most of the renewable natural
resources that are exploited or harvested are exhaustible. Their ability to remain inexhaust-
ible—i.e., sustainable—is dependent on proper exploitation-management of these resources.
The prominent nonrenewable natural resources include minerals and fossil fuels (coal, oil,
and gas). The discussion in this chapter will be conined to industrial activities associated
with the extraction or harvesting of nonrenewable mineral, nonmineral, and (energy) natural
resources (e.g., uranium, oil sands). The materials that constitute these resources are extracted
or harvested by primary upstream industries devoted to such activities as mining, excavation,
fracking (rock fracturing and extraction of hydrocarbon product), mineral and hydrocarbon
extraction, processing, drilling, and pumping. The outputs from these upstream industries
are raw materials for their respective midstream or downstream industries (see Chapter 7).
Resource extraction and processing industries use the geoenvironment as a resource
pool containing materials and substances that can be extracted and processed as value-
added products. The common characteristic of the industries in this group is processing of
material extracted from the ground . The sources of stressors, the types of stressors, and their
impacts discussed in this chapter include
• Mineral-metal mining industries. Worldwide production is in the order of 1.4 bil-
lion tonnes/year for iron ore and 2700 tonnes/year of gold in 2011 according to
the U.S. Geological Survey (Menzie et al., 2013). Metal extraction increased by 20%
from 1980 to 2000 (Chamley, 2003). Some developed countries in Europe and Japan
have completely depleted their underground resources.
139