Microbially Driven Geochemistry of Mining Water and Waste

Dear Colleagues,

Biogeochemical cycling in acid mine drainage is well-established knowledge obtained from extensive research, but an understanding of the microbially driven transformations across the wider array of conditions of mine water and waste in environmental settings remains missing. These varied geochemical conditions are present in mining environments where water and mine waste management systems consist of large-scale tailings ponds, pit lakes and waste rock/tailings storage facilities and water treatment systems whose biogeochemical trajectories are not fully controlled. Of particular interest is understanding the precursor biogeochemical cycling events of acid mine drainage to inform early detection and mitigation prior to the onset of “run-away” conditions and other microbially driven processes that drive various bioelement and metal cycling. Interestingly, similar mechanisms that result in problematic geochemistry like acid mine drainage may prove useful in terms of shared economic and environmental benefits. For instance, microbially driven processes may be leveraged for the (re)processing and bioremediation of waste to recover critical metals and thus can be examined through a different vantage point.

In practice, environmental geochemistry most often uses a traditional abiotic lens forcing the industry to try managing what are viewed as microbial “black boxes” across sites with often unpredictable or unexplainable outcomes in terms of water quality, even though genomic and microbial, ecological tools are readily available. With an ever-increasing need to proactively protect water resources, the mining environmental geochemistry “tool-kit” needs to be expanded to include microbial frameworks and in tandem meet the critical mineral demands. Thus, there is an urgent need and vested interest globally across the scientific, mining, and environmental communities to constrain through research the biogeochemical controls at tailings and waste rock mineral interphases, as well as within mining-impacted waters.

This Special Issue aims to bring together corresponding studies from all these areas that require multidisciplinary approaches including, but not limit to, the following: mineralogy, traditional static and kinetic testing approaches, aqueous geochemistry, modeling, and microbial genomics. We welcome fundamental biogeochemical studies, experimental as well as theoretical, and field-based studies directly examining biogeochemical dynamics in these mining environments. We also solicit methodological studies employing cutting-edge in situ analytics or frameworks to examine these complex systems. The hope is that this Special Issue will contribute to the achievement of a better understanding of biogeochemical cycling in mining environments to be leveraged for robust environmental management across the economic sector.

Dr. Gerdhard L. Jessen
Dr. Kelly Whaley-Martin
Guest Editors

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• environmental geochemistry
• acid mine drainage
• microbial geochemistry
• microbial genomics
• applied microbial ecology