MINERÍA la mejor puerta de acceso al sector minero MINERÍA / AGOSTO 2022 / EDICIÓN 539 9 Abstract Solid mining waste may contain pyrites and other sulfides, which are unstable in the presence of air, water and microorganisms, leading to the generation of acid mine drainage (AMD). In rehabilitation processes, it is common to adopt eminently physical-chemical approaches, despite the fact that microbiological aspects are known to be relevant, since they catalyze the alteration of sulfide minerals, thus accelerating contamination in areas affected by mining. In these scenarios, the interaction of microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi and microalgae) with mining environmental liabilities must be analyzed in greater depth, since their role is fundamental in the reclamation of soils and waters. Thanks to metagenomics, these communities can be studied and analyzed from their genetic traces, which allows monitoring of the populations of an ecosystem, both at certain times and areas as well as throughout the entire process. These population data are used as markers for control to establish the proper progress of the land rehabilitation plan or environmental mitigation actions. In the present work, genetic data from environmental samples, available in the repository of the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) were used to re-evaluate the samples and carry out bioinformatic and biostatistical studies, with our own methods and procedures, in order to establish the diversity microbial in sites affected by mining processes. Two groups of data were chosen from mining sites with common problems at a global level. The first group corresponded to the monitoring of contamination in an acid water mitigation system of a copper mine in China and its subsequent discharge into a river. The second group chosen corresponded to coal mining sites in South Africa, whose soils were rehabilitated at different times for 24 years. It is thus intended to show a new approach, from computational genomics, which allows a better understanding of how the ecosystems affected by mining activity are and how this information can allow fine-tuning decision-making when selecting or monitoring environmental control systems or processes of closure or rehabilitation of mining sites. Introducción La rehabilitación de los espacios en los cuales se llevaron a cabo actividades mineras es una labor prioritaria y de obligatoriedad legal para los proyectos mineros actuales y futuros. El reto de la minería moderna consiste en mantener un equilibrio entre sus operaciones y el medio ambiente. El manejo adecuado de los residuos mineros, como los llamados drenajes ácidos de minería (DAM), provenientes, entre otros, de los relaves (sólidos ricos en piritas y en otros sulfuros residuales), es el factor clave para lograrlo. Estos residuos son efluentes con pH ácido, resultado de la reacción de la oxidación de la pirita y la generación de acidez (Dos Santos et al., 2016). Los DAM presentan, además, elevada concentración en metales, entre los que destacan el hierro, aluminio, manganeso, cobre, zinc, plomo y algunos otros metales pesados y metaloides (Park et al., 2019). Por tanto, su vertido descontrolado en aguas y suelos genera impactos muy negativos sobre la salud de las comunidades biológicas cercanas, la pérdida de biodiversidad y la destrucción de ecosistemas acuáticos (Rodríguez-Galán et al., 2019).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM0Mzk2