Rational subsoil management for the conservation of agricultural land and resources

Integrated use of subsoil: preservation of arable land and resource conservation

For the agricultural sector, rational subsoil use has a direct environmental significance. Incomplete ore processing leads to the alienation of valuable agricultural land for tailings dumps and waste heaps. At the same time, most solid mineral deposits are complex: in the coal industry, alongside coal, it is necessary to utilize mine rock, water, and methane, and in the iron ore industry — to eliminate losses of copper, cobalt, lead, zinc, gold, and sulfur.

Non-ferrous metal ores contain only a few percent or fractions of a percent of the main element, which results in the extraction of a huge volume of rock mass. However, associated components are often more valuable than the primary metal raw material. Complete processing allows for the production of about 40 elements in the form of high-purity metals. In the copper industry, 13 associated components are extracted and more than 20 types of products are made; in the lead-zinc industry — 18 components; and from copper-nickel ores, nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum group metals, gold, silver, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium are obtained.

Improvements in enrichment technologies allow for the inclusion of lower-quality raw materials in production. The decrease in standards for copper content in ore over the past century clearly shows the capabilities of modern processing methods:

Reducing losses during extraction and logistics of raw materials

The method of developing a deposit directly affects the volume of irretrievably lost minerals. The open-cast method shows significantly lower resource losses compared to underground excavation of rock.

• Coal losses (open-cast / underground method) — 10 % / 30–40 %
• Tungsten-molybdenum ore losses — 3–5 % / 10–12 %
• Copper ore losses — 3.0–3.5 % / 10–13 %
• Lead-zinc ore losses — 5–7 % / 12–16 %

Significant damage to resources is caused in the oil and gas sector, where oil losses in some cases reach 70–80% of proven reserves, and billions of cubic meters of associated petroleum gas have been burned in gas flares for years. At the same time, the depth of oil refining (extraction of light petroleum products: diesel fuel, gasoline, and raw materials for chemistry) is 30% lower than in the USA, and the residue goes into fuel oil, tar, and asphalt. Increasing this indicator would allow for reducing oil production by millions of tons and increasing the yield of fuel for agricultural machinery.

The use of geophysical and aerospace methods, modern drilling, and computer technology helps to reduce the depletion of subsoil. Exploration and deep study of the Earth's crust are aimed at solving the following practical tasks:

• identification and assessment of new mineral deposits;
• study of the patterns of their formation and placement;
• clarification of the conditions for deposit development.

Protection of mineral deposits from flooding and construction

Competent distribution of the land fund requires linking the construction of infrastructure facilities with subsoil exploration. When allocating plots for the creation of reservoirs or the erection of large structures, it is fundamentally important to assess the geological potential of the territory in advance. Without mandatory study of rock composition and the presence of minerals, there is a risk of permanently blocking access to valuable raw material reserves.

At the stage of geological study of areas intended for flooding or allocation, specialists are required to provide an official opinion on the prospects of the land for various types of mineral resources. Ignoring this procedure leads to the flooding of deposits and makes subsequent development of the seams impossible. As a result, not only arable land areas but also strategic subsoil reserves are withdrawn from economic circulation.