Ecotoxicological analysis in open sky mining caves: a systematic review

Abstract

Mining lakes, also called pits or pit lakes, are formed in exhausted open pit mines. With recent numerical growth in several countries and ecological effects still little known by the scientific community, are considered an emerging environmental problem worldwide. Its management is challenging compared to that applied to natural water formations, as they present environmentally complex and dynamic processes requiring actions based on systemic evaluative approaches.  One of the areas of knowledge capable of assisting in obtaining answers to research questions of this nature is Ecotoxicology, however, until then it is not possible to find bibliographic surveys aimed at mapping the accumulated knowledge on the subject. Given this context, and as a comparative analysis, but without the intention of closing the subject, the present study aimed to carry out a systematic review of the main published works that used ecotoxicological tests for the purpose of environmental assessment of pits. For this purpose, the terms 'pit lake', 'ecotoxicological' and 'ecotoxicology' were used in the database of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, linked to the Ministry of Education of Brazil, chosen for compiling hundreds of journals distributed in several referential bases. Among the main results obtained, the following stand out: studies with this approach are still recent and scarce in the world, notably in Brazil, and most of them have been published in European scientific journals. Most of them, the authors developed ecotoxicological tests chronic and unispecies, aimed at understanding aspects associated with water quality and pits sediments, although in less number in this last subject. Despite the growing interest of researchers in Environmental Sciences on the subject – due to a slight increase in the number of articles published between the years 2013 and 2019 –, there is still a vast scientific niche to be explored in an attempt to better understand the behavior of ecology of mining lakes. Which can be achieved through the establishment of integrated investigative approaches aimed at obtaining responses more environmentally safe.