Modeling the influence of forest vegetation and climate change on the long-term performance of a cover with capillary barrier effects used to control acid mine drainage: the Lorraine case study

ABSTRACT

The Lorraine mine site in Témiscamingue region (Québec, Canada) was reclaimed with a cover with capillary barrier effects (CCBE) to limit acid mine drainage generation. The main objective of this study is to predict the long-term hydrogeological behaviour of the CCBE at Lorraine site, including the influence of vegetation and climate change (CC). Numerical simulations showed that performance of the CCBE is: (1) not affected by forest vegetation and CC in the saturated zone in the north of the Lorraine site and (2) more sensitive to vegetation in the unsaturated zone in the south where the phreatic level is low.

KEYWORDS:

• Acid mine drainage
• mine site reclamation
• vegetation/mining cover relations
• numerical modelling
• climate change

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the NSERC-UQAT Industrial Chair on Mine Site Reclamation for providing funding for this study. The authors also acknowledge the financial support of the NSERC-Discovery Grant of Marie Guittonny as well as the industrial partners of the RIME-UQAT-Polytechnique. The authors thank the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles et des Forêts du Québec for granting them access to the Lorraine site. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments that improved the quality of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the NSERC-UQAT Industrial Chair on Mine Site Reclamation [IRCPJ252714-18] of Bruno Bussière and the NSERC-Discovery Grant [RGPIN-2020-06725] of Marie Guittonny.