Perforation—human activity that creates “holes” in the landscape—has lasting effects that are still rarely measured in a way that is useful for decision-making. The timing matters: as fossil fuels are phased out, demand for metals and minerals is expected to surge because they are essential for large-scale electrification and digitalisation. That, in turn, is likely to drive more mining and quarrying worldwide—making it increasingly important to understand not only what happens inside the extraction site boundary, but where mines and quarries fragment surrounding habitats and increase biodiversity risk.
The method Carla has developed can help identify high risk areas and supply chain hotspots before further landscape fragmentation takes place. The core idea is straightforward: environmental assessments often focus on the footprint of the extraction site itself, while missing how the wider landscape is disrupted and broken up.
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The full text is available at the following link: Mining in the last of the wild: a method to identify mines in intact landscapes | Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Read the article in Science Direct
“Landscape perforation in life cycle assessment: Method development with global application to quarries and mines” (link to sciencedirect.com)