OVERVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF MINING ON THE ... - IIED pubs

1.6.1 Data on the location, nature, size and scale of mining operations
Within South Africa, these data are available from the South African Minerals Database System curated by the
Council for Geoscience and available for purchase in both digital form and as maps at a scale of 1:1,000,000.
The price of the South African data set precluded its direct use in this study and the set of maps was used
instead. In addition, a variety of publications and reports produced by the South African Geological Survey were
also used.
For Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia, data were obtained from a
variety of mapping sources and from publications and reports produced by different mining houses. These data
consisted of site information only.
Data from Zimbabwe were obtained from a variety of publications of the Zimbabwe Geological Survey (ZGS),
primarily the comprehensive Mineral Resources Series by Bartholomew (1999a) and (1999b), though this data
is somewhat old, being only continued up to 1984. These data were supplemented by data from the ZGS
Bulletin on the Midlands Greenstone Belt (Campbell & Pitfield, 1994), other ZGS Bulletins (see for example,
Baglow, 1998; Baldock, 1991; Garson, 1995), a gold database marketed by Zambezi Exploration Pty Ltd
(Mikhailov et al., 2000), as well as from various anecdotal data sources.
Data for mining operations located in Zimbabwe and South Africa were restricted to those mining operations
that had achieved a minimum production specific to each commodity (Table 1.6). This process of selection was
not possible for other basin states due to the scarcity of data; all mining operations identified for the Angola,
Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania sectors of the Zambezi and Limpopo basins were
located on appropriate maps. Co-ordinates for the Zimbabwe mines, available from Bartholomew (1999a) and
(1999b) were digitised during this project; Zimbabwe gold operation data were obtained from Mikhalov et al.
(2000).
Table 1.6: Minimum annual production limits (usually metric tonnes) for inclusion of mining operations in this
study.
Commodity
Production
(Tonnes)
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Commodity
Production
(Tonnes
Aventurine 100 Kaolin 2,000
Agate 10 Kyanite 10,000
Amazonite 10 Lead 100
Amethyst 10 Limestone 100,000
Andalusite 500 Lithium 500
Antimony 100 Magnesite 10,000
Arsenic 100 Manganese 1,000
Asbestos 1,000 Mercury All producing
Baryte 500 Mica 200
Beryl 100 Mtorolite 1
Caesium 10 Nickel 1,000
Calcite 500 Ochre 1,000