Integrated approach of ecosystem services for regional sustainability and mine reclamation with a special focus on health and environmental risks due to radionuclides in a clustered mining region of cement city in South India

Abstract

In the recent years, sustainability and ecosystem services getting more attention and became a vital component for environmental policy makers and regulatory agencies. The impact of mining in sustainability pillars such as social, economic and environment is immense. The mining industry influences the sustainability both positively and negatively. The increase in job opportunity and per capita income will have positive impact on social and economic pillars. On the other hand, environmental pollutants such as air pollution, water pollution and land use and land cover changes will negatively affect the environment pillar. Furthermore, ecosystem services may direct or indirect benefit to people in various ways. Based on this benefit, ecosystem services classified into four major categories such as provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services, and cultural services. In ecosystem services, most of the function have direct or indirect relation with soil and soil health. It has been proven that due to anthropogenic activities especially mining, the radionuclides concentration in soil become hazardous to human health and environment. Because of these irreversible effects of mining, carrying capacity is the predominant factor, which is affected. newlineThe ultimate aim of the research work is to determine the regional carrying capacity of mining industrial area from sustainability index and ecosystem services with consideration of future demand of mineral production. In order to map out the relationship between the sustainability pillars such as social, economic and environment as well as to forecast the future sustainability, this research incorporated a system dynamics and evaluation index tool. Using the dynamic modelling tool, a sustainability index of the mining region has been established to assess the degree of regional sustainable development. The model includes a social sub-system, an economic sub-system, and an environment sub-system.