• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.408-416
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• 2015

The collapse of the underground cavities and voids, which were made for developing mineral resources, can cause the subsidence of the ground surface in the residential areas. During the Japanese colonial era and the 1960's mining boom period, lots of mines had been developed indiscriminately in Korea. Due to complicated geological conditions and mining methods, many of dangerous underground mine cavities with steep slopes had been generated at the shallow surface. Due to such conditions, it is difficult to directly apply valid foreign reclamation practice for the cavities in Korea environments. It is necessary to develop the efficient ground stabilization technologies for the Korea underground mine conditions to solve abandoned mine reclamation properly. Therefore, MIRECO and Korea government have been carrying out practical researches and technical developments together with other academic researchers and reclamation business partners, and various practical solutions such as surveying and exploration methods, proper cavity filling materials and reinforcement methods have been developed with application in the mine field. In this article, up to date technologies and R&D trends in the field of mine subsidence prevention technology are broadly reviewed to establish the future direction of a research and development.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2008

The frequency analysis and the probability plot were applied to heavy metal contents of soils collected from the Goseong Cu mine area as a statistic method for the determination of the threshold value which was able to partition a population comprising largely dispersed heavy metal contents into the background and the anomalous populations. Almost all the heavy metal contents of soil showed a positively skewed distributions and their cumulative percentage frequencies plotted as a curved lines on logarithmic probability plot which represent a mixture of two or more overlapping populations. Total Cu, Pb and Cd data and extractable Cu and Pb data could be partitioned into background and anomalous populations by using the inflection in each curve. The others showed a normally distributed population or an largely overlapped populations. The threshold values obtained from replotted frequency distributions with the partitioned populations were Cu 400 mg/kg, Pb 450 mg/kg and Cd 3.5 mg/kg in total contents and Cu 40 mg/kg and Pb 12 mg/kg in extractable contents, respectively. The thresholds for total contents are much higher than the tolerable level of soil pollution proposed by Kloke(Cu 100 mg/kg, Pb 100 mg/kg, Cd 3 mg/kg), but those for extractable contents are not exceeded the worrying level of soil pollution proposed by Ministry of Environment(Cu 50 mg/kg, Pb 100 mg/kg). When the threshold values were used as the criteria of soil pollution in the study area, $9{\sim}19%$ of investigated soil population was in polluted level. The spatial distributions of heavy metal contents greater than threshold values showed that polluted soils with heavy metals are restricted within the mountain soils in the vicinity of abandoned mines.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 2004

Pollution reduction and/or control technology becomes one of the pressing post-semiconductor research field to lead an advanced industrial structure. Soil/groundwater remediation techniques may act as a core technology which will create many demands on pollution reduction areas. A plenty numbers of abandoned metal mines were left without any remediation action in Korea, and it may be potential sources of heavy metal and As contamination in the ecosystem. In order to bring this soil contamination to a settlement, the emerging soil/groundwater remediation techniques should be introduced. Main research topics in the United States and Europe move towards the clean remediation technology without any secondary impact and the feasible application of developing technique into the field scale study. With these advantages, several soil/groundwater techniques such as electrokinetic soil processing, permeable reactive barrier, stabilization/solidification, biosorption, soil flushing with biosurfactant, bioleaching and phytoremediation will be summarized in this paper.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.311-323
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• 2004

To date, restoration ecology has focused on local areas, particularly small-scale ecosystems. As such, restoration ecology has been applied to areas with clear boundaries, such as roads, abandoned mines, wetlands, and forest ecosystems. However, those involved in these restoration efforts, due to their tendency to implement comprehensive plans to change the landscape structure, and their mismanagement of the restoration process, have more often than not wound up weakening the ecological functions of surrounding ecosystems, and in further degrading the ecosystem which they were trying to restore. To resolve these problems and restore a comparatively large-scale region, methods to assess the impact of such restoration efforts on surrounding ecosystems must be developed. These include expanding the scale of restoration efforts; in other words, moving from the local to the landscape scale. As a conclusion, practice of ecological restoration is increasingly moving towards landscape scale in order to deal with these problems.

• Journal of Mushroom
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.163-170
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• 2014

The potential ability of Button mushroom compost (BMC) to solubilize heavy metals was estimated with metal contaminated soils collected from abandoned mines of Boryeong area in South Korea. The bacterial strains in BMC were isolated for investigating the mobilization of metals in soil or plant by the strains and identified according to 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. When metal solubilization potential of BMC was assessed in a batch experiment, the BMC was found to be capable of solubilizing metals in the presence of metals (Co, Pb and Zn) and the results showed that inoculation of BMC could increase the concentrations of water soluble Co, Pb and Cd by 35, 25 and 45% respectively, than those of non-inoculated soils. BMC-assisted growth promotion and metal uptake in sunflower (Helianthus annuus) was also evaluated in a pot experiment. In comparison with non-inoculated seedlings, the inoculation led to increase the growth of H. annuus by 27, 25 and 28% respectively in Co, Pb and Zn contaminated soils. Moreover, enhanced accumulation of Co, Pb and Zn in the shoot and root systems was observed in inoculated plants, where metal translocation from root to the above-ground tissues was also found to be enhanced by the BMC. The apparent results suggested that the BMC could effectively be employed in enhancing phytoextraction of Co, Pb and Zn from contaminated soils.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.239-247
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• 2005

A new railway line of about 17km length was planned between Dongbaeksan and the neighboring town Dokye to improve the existing decrepit railway system. New line about 17km of the distance will almost be in circular alignment tunnels owing to the difference of elevation about 380m. Since the geology of the area is rather unusual compared to the normal in South Korea, extensive geological investigations have been carried out to prepare geological maps and profiles along the planned tunnel routes. The tunnel will almost be in sedimentary rock formations, such as limestone, sandstone, shale, coal etc and be near abandoned mines Various rock formations have the complicated, alter ed those rocks, but are well developed with laminated formations. Each rock formations have been classified using the Q-system and the cost of tunnel excavation, support has been estimated and compared for three alternative routes in the design stage. Based on these estimates, the final route of t he railway line was chosen.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.48-59
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• 2018

Beryllium (Be), cobalt (Co), thallium (Tl) and vanadium (V) are candidates of 21 priority soil pollutants in Korea. The distribution of their concentration in soils from three contamination sources including industrial, roadside and mining areas was investigated. Concentrations of the metals were evaluated quantitatively using pollution indices and the fractionation of metals was conducted using modified SM&T (Standards Measurements and Testing programme) sequential extraction. Concentrations of the metals for all samples from industrial and roadside soils were within the range of natural background levels, while some of Be in soils from abandoned mines exceeded that the range. Enrichment Factor (EF) and Nemerow Integrated Pollution Index (NIPI) for Be, Co, Tl and V showed that there are effects or possibilities of anthropogenic activities. Pollution Load Index (PLI) analyses indicated all investigated sites needed further monitoring. The results of sequential extractions indicated mobile fractions (F1+F2) of Be, Tl and V were below 30% except some of Co in soil, which implies their low mobility to neighboring environment media. Variable tools like sequential extraction, comparison with background/actual concentration and pollution indices, as well as aqua regia extraction should be considered when evaluating Be, Co, Tl, V in soil.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.174-181
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• 2001

The cavities created by underground mining, if remained unfilled, can cause ground settlement and surface subsidence as a result of relaxation and breakdown of the carven roof. Construction of structures above the underground mine cavity will have serious problems concerning both structural stability and safely even if the cavity is back-filled. This study was conducted to confirm the location and condition of the cavern as well as the state of the back-fill in A mine area using core logging and borehole camera. The bearing capacity and other mechanical properties of the ground were also measured by the standard penetration test(SPT). Obtained data were used to assess the stability of the ground and the structures to be built by numerical analysis using FLAC. The site investigation results showed that the mine cavities were filled with materials such as boulder and silty sand(SM by unified classification). Result of the numerical analyses indicated that constructing building structures on the over-lying ground above the filled cavities is secure against the potential problems such as surface subsidence and ground settlement.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.138-145
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• 2015

Heavy metal pollution in agricultural field near the abandoned metal mines is a critical problem in Korea. General remediation technique is to apply chemical amendments and soil covering. However, there is no specific guidelines for conducting soil covering. Therefore, main objective of this research was to determine optimum soil covering technique with microcosm experiment. Three different chemical amendments, lime stone (LS), steel slag (SS), and acid mine drainage sludge (AMDS), were examined and varied soil covering depth, 20, 30, 40cm, was applied to determine optimum remediation technique. Bioavailable heavy metal concentration in soil and total concentration of heavy metals in crop were monitored. Result showed that average heavy metal concentration in varied soil covering depth was ordered as 40 cm ($14.5mg\;kg^{-1}$) < 20 cm ($14.6mg\;kg^{-1}$) < 30 cm ($16.0mg\;kg^{-1}$) and also heavy metal concentration in crop was ordered as 40 cm ($100{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$) < 30 cm ($183{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$) < 20 cm ($190{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$). In terms of chemical amendments, average heavy metal concentration was decreased as AMDS ($150{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$) < SS ($151{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$) < LS ($154{\mu}g\;kg^{-1}$). Overall, depth of soil covering should be over 30 cm to minimize bioaccumulation of heavy metals and SS and LS could be applied in heavy metal contaminated soil for remediation purposes.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.57-62
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• 2008

The application of constructed subsurface-flow wetlands for treatment of wastewater from abandoned mines is being increased. Crushed limestone, oak chips, and mushroom composites are often employed in a bulk form, as the substrates in the bed media. Efficiency of the subsurface-flow treatment system drops with time as the hydraulic conductivity of the wetland soil decreases significantly, presumably due to chemical reactions with the wastewater. The purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of immobilized beads carrying sulfate reducing bacteria for acid mine drainage treatment system. The ingredients of immobilized beads are organic materials such as mushroom composite and oak chips, limestone powder for a pH buffer, mixed with a modified Coleville Synthetic Brine. It was found that immobilized beads are more efficient than the bulk form for pH recovery, sulfate and heavy metal removal.