The Rush for Treasure
There are many minor methods for extracting gold from the Earth. Some forms, such as gold panning, are often practiced as a hobby or tourist attraction in areas where gold was once abundant.
Sluicing can also be practiced on a small scale, though some mining companies still use the process to collect gold from river beds. In order to make the process profitable, the shoreline and surrounding area must be altered to maximize the amount of gold-bearing silt. Some sluice mines also use dredging techniques, which draws sediment up from the river bed and into the sluice system.
The majority of the world's gold comes from hard rock mining, where ore is recovered from deep within the Earth. Until the introduction of heavy machinery and advanced digging tools, all gold mines were dug in the form of tunnels. In many countries, this method of mining us still used today.
Shaft Mines
In the shaft or tunnel mining process, workers chip away at the rock, collecting those pieces which contain trace amounts of gold. These will later be crushed and separated with chemicals. Although technology has improved the safety of shaft mining, there is still plenty of danger for workers toiling in the dark. Injury or death can occur from falling rock, slips, and in some cases, explosions. Not all countries or mining companies follow safety guidelines and regulations that help to prevent these types of accidents. Safety equipment is not always provided for the miners.
"30 percent of artisanal gold miners are women and children."Artisanal or small-scale mining refers to low production mining projects by both companies and individuals. The processes used vary depending on the region, and include underground and sluicing techniques. Today there are as many as 15 million people making a living as artisanal miners, 30 percent of which are women and children.
The earnings for most mine workers is low - salaries are often paid in bags of rock which may or may not contain valuable gold. Companies are able to exploit their employees with this 'lottery' approach, for the promise of an undetermined amount of gold is better than nothing at all.
In some underdeveloped countries, many peasants attempt to discover tiny amounts of wealth by digging illegal shaft mines, searching for rock that may contain traces of gold. Though the yield - if any - is minuscule, many people still hope that a lucky strike will change their circumstances.
Open Pit Mines
Thanks to industrial developments such as cranes and hauling trucks, most major mining companies now employ open pit mining to maximize their gold collection. Essentially a large hole in the ground, these immense mines are continually expanded until all profitable traces of ore have been extracted.
As large machines dig deep into the Earth, hauling trucks cart away the rock to be sorted. Whatever materials do not contain ore are immediately discarded in large piles called waste dumps. The amount of rock disposed of is massive. In order to collect a single ounce of gold, as much as 250 tons of rock must be removed from the pits. The Newport Mining Corporation's open pit mine in Indonesia employs 111 trucks which haul nearly a hundred million tons of rock every year.
Some companies do attempt to lessen their mines' environmental impact, though not due to any moral obligation. According to mine engineer Charles Kubach, the environment is considered in mine planning because "the cost of environmental protection is minimized by incorporating it into the initial design, rather than performing remedial measures to compensate for design deficiencies; and negative publicity or poor public relations may have severe economic consequences".
Sluicing can also be practiced on a small scale, though some mining companies still use the process to collect gold from river beds. In order to make the process profitable, the shoreline and surrounding area must be altered to maximize the amount of gold-bearing silt. Some sluice mines also use dredging techniques, which draws sediment up from the river bed and into the sluice system.
The majority of the world's gold comes from hard rock mining, where ore is recovered from deep within the Earth. Until the introduction of heavy machinery and advanced digging tools, all gold mines were dug in the form of tunnels. In many countries, this method of mining us still used today.
Shaft Mines
In the shaft or tunnel mining process, workers chip away at the rock, collecting those pieces which contain trace amounts of gold. These will later be crushed and separated with chemicals. Although technology has improved the safety of shaft mining, there is still plenty of danger for workers toiling in the dark. Injury or death can occur from falling rock, slips, and in some cases, explosions. Not all countries or mining companies follow safety guidelines and regulations that help to prevent these types of accidents. Safety equipment is not always provided for the miners.
"30 percent of artisanal gold miners are women and children."Artisanal or small-scale mining refers to low production mining projects by both companies and individuals. The processes used vary depending on the region, and include underground and sluicing techniques. Today there are as many as 15 million people making a living as artisanal miners, 30 percent of which are women and children.
The earnings for most mine workers is low - salaries are often paid in bags of rock which may or may not contain valuable gold. Companies are able to exploit their employees with this 'lottery' approach, for the promise of an undetermined amount of gold is better than nothing at all.
In some underdeveloped countries, many peasants attempt to discover tiny amounts of wealth by digging illegal shaft mines, searching for rock that may contain traces of gold. Though the yield - if any - is minuscule, many people still hope that a lucky strike will change their circumstances.
Open Pit Mines
Thanks to industrial developments such as cranes and hauling trucks, most major mining companies now employ open pit mining to maximize their gold collection. Essentially a large hole in the ground, these immense mines are continually expanded until all profitable traces of ore have been extracted.
As large machines dig deep into the Earth, hauling trucks cart away the rock to be sorted. Whatever materials do not contain ore are immediately discarded in large piles called waste dumps. The amount of rock disposed of is massive. In order to collect a single ounce of gold, as much as 250 tons of rock must be removed from the pits. The Newport Mining Corporation's open pit mine in Indonesia employs 111 trucks which haul nearly a hundred million tons of rock every year.
Some companies do attempt to lessen their mines' environmental impact, though not due to any moral obligation. According to mine engineer Charles Kubach, the environment is considered in mine planning because "the cost of environmental protection is minimized by incorporating it into the initial design, rather than performing remedial measures to compensate for design deficiencies; and negative publicity or poor public relations may have severe economic consequences".
Open Pit Mining
To Learn More, Visit Wikipedia
Have you ever seen what a gold mine really looks like? These deep gouges are often so large, they can be seen from space.Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast mining and open-cut mining, refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow.
The term is used to differentiate this form of mining from extractive methods that require tunneling into the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful minerals or rock are found near the surface; that is, where the overburden (surface material covering the valuable deposit) is relatively thin or the material of interest is structurally unsuitable for tunneling (as would be the case for sand, cinder, and gravel). For minerals that occur deep below the surface—where the overburden is thick or the mineral occurs as veins in hard rock— underground mining methods extract the valued material.
Open-pit mines that produce building materials and dimension stone are commonly referred to as quarries. People are unlikely to make a distinction between an open-pit mine and other types of open-cast mines, such as quarries, borrows, placers, and strip mines.
Open-pit mines are typically enlarged until either the mineral resource is exhausted, or an increasing ratio of overburden to ore makes further mining uneconomic. When this occurs, the exhausted mines are sometimes converted to landfills for disposal of solid wastes. However, some form of water control is usually required to keep the mine pit from becoming a lake.
