BYU graduate student Amber Johnson checks for new sprouts in a lab on the BYU campus in Provo on June 25, 2021. Rio Tinto Kennecott and Brigham Young University researchers are joining forces to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to improve reclamation at the Bingham Canyon Mine. In June 2020, a group of students and professors from the BYU Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences broke ground on four research projects on land areas surrounding the mine with the goal to increase plant diversity, stability and enhance the aesthetics of areas visible from the Salt Lake Valley. | Annie Barker, Deseret News
“You kind of feel like an ant to them,” BYU student Mo Cartwright says, recalling being wide-eyed with wonder following the house-sized excavation trucks to the site of the team’s field work at Bingham Canyon Mine, the largest man-made excavation site and the deepest open-pit mine in the world.
“We’re all like little kids, like ‘Look how cool they are, they’re so big!’” Cartwright said recently at a lab on the BYU campus in Provo.
But the group of undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines making their way up the steep, rocky hills in western Salt Lake County hauling heavy equipment on their backs have a big task of their own as well.
In between planting native species and recording the amount of water in the soil, students open their laptops and sign in to online classes, combining field work and lectures.
These students are working alongside Rio Tinto Kennecott to develop new, sustainable solutions for reintroducing wildlife to one of Utah’s harshest environments — the damaged, rocky hillsides surrounding the Bingham Canyon Mine.
This work began in early 2020, when a group of 12 students and 11 professors from the BYU Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences were brought together by Matthew Madsen and Brad Geary, two associate professors of plant science at the university. The group started preliminary work with Rio Tinto for about a year, visiting the site and discussing the goals that the company had for reclamation of the area. These goals ranged from reclaiming areas with less standard approaches to figuring out cost-effective ways to ensure seed germination.
Kennecott is working on a stabilization project on the southern dump site, a waste rock extension project and a cleanup of the groundwater, which the EPA found contaminated with high levels of lead and arsenic. The students’ project is distinct from the 2015 rehabilitation project on the mountainside.
“This is aimed at developing new practices that can improve our previous and future reclamation efforts,” said Kate Ruebelmann, environmental adviser for Rio Tinto Kennecott. “We want to show that we understand our rock plot responsibility and want to reclaim those areas and increase the beauty of our valley.”
Annie Barker, Deseret News
BYU doctoral student Alex Larson studies seeds in a lab on the BYU campus in Provo on June 25, 2021. Her Saints Rest Biodiversity Study is working to increase …read more
Source:: Deseret News – Utah News
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