The mine waste in and around the town of Tonopah in Nevada has been an issue for the residents for years. The issue is that without proper testing, someone may accidentally start construction on a pile of old mine waste without even realizing it. Thus creating a health hazard for both the construction workers and those living in or around the building. Testing can be done on a site, but this process is time consuming, and only individual sites can be either approved or denied. There is no current large scale method for detecting this old mine waste. Our plan is to collect various samples of known mine waste piles around Tonopah and artificially age them at different rates to ensure that there are no areas we could not detect due to weathering of particular mine waste minerals. Afterwards, we will run these samples through a spectroradiometer, a device that detects which minerals and isotopes are present by the frequency of the infrared light that is projected off of the sample. We can then use that data to map out the entirety of Tonopah based on similar light projections given off by similar concentrations of minerals and isotopes. Effectively creating a map of the concentration of mine waste in any particular area. We have the methods mapped out, however, due to the recent pandemic, we have not been able to make it out there yet to collect samples. However, we hope to make it out in early August to carry out the rest of the experiment. In the meantime, we will be working on a multiband raster to ensure easy integration with our samples into a gis system.
Author: Lucas Young
Faculty Advisor: Mark Krekeler, Department of Geology
You must be logged in to post a comment.