38
Geotechnical News • March 2019
direction, the acquisition of evapo-
ration rates from the pond, tailings
active beach and tailings inactive
beach, in the case of a conventional
tailings operation, either as separate
sources of evaporation or a spatially
averaged unique source of evaporation
(see Figure 4).
Research application
It is expected that the success of
these measurements will lead to the
deployment of ECV instrumentation
in mining facilities on a long-term
basis. This would allow us to obtain
real-time actual evaporation rates that
may result, in the case of TSFs located
in humid areas, in optimizing drying
cycles. For TSFs located in arid areas,
it will help improve water management
practices since it would quantitatively
provide evidence of the differences in
evaporation rates between the pond,
the active beaches and the inactive
beaches. Finally, the collection of
ECV data will definitively support the
design and development of decommis-
sioning plans of waste rock dumps.
References
M. Aubinet, T. Vesala, D. Papale.
2012. “Eddy Covariance”.
Springer
G. Burba. 2013. “Eddy Covariance
Method”. LI-COR Biosciences.
Carey, S. K., S. L. Barbour, and M.
J. Hendry. 2005. „Evaporation
from a Waste-Rock Surface, Key
Lake, Saskatchewan.“ Canadian
Geotechnical Journal 42 (4): 1189-
1199.
J. Cui, J. Zornberg. 2009. “Water
Balance and Evapotranspiration
Monitoring in Geotechnical and
Geoenvironmental Engineering”.
In Laboratory and Field Testing of
Unsaturated Soils, 171-186.
T. Foken. 2012. “Micrometeorology”.
2nd Edition. Springer.
Sebastián Fernández
PhD student, Geoenvironmental
Engineering
Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering,
University of Alberta
7-203 Donadeo Innovation Centre
for Engineering, 9211 – 116 Street
NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9
WASTE GEOTECHNICS
Figure 4: Conventional tailings operations usually have at least three areas
with different evaporation rates depending on their surface water content
and albedo coefficient: the pond, the active beach (fresh tailings) and the
inactive beach (dry tailings).
