Optimizing post-mining land use for pit area in open-pit mining using fuzzy decision making method

Open-pit mining method has severe environmental impacts which should be prevented, monitored, controlled, and reduced by mined-land reclamation process. After mine closure, a permanent post-mining land use should be implemented as an appropriate choice for using different sections of mined land. The most appropriate alternative of post-mining land use for each section of mined land is presented as the optimum post-mining land use. Pit area among different sections of mined land has more significant effects on the environment and also on defining the optimum post-mining land use for other sections of mined land. Though there are several alternatives and criteria for defining the optimum post-mining land use, the multi-attribute decision-making methods can be efficient techniques in this regard. The nature of the effective parameters used for defining the optimum post-mining land use is the same as Fuzzy numbers including incremental changes without definite limits. Thus, application of the Fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making modeling can produce more reliable results than that of other techniques. As well, pair-wise comparisons and judgments through Fuzzy numbers have proper consistency with the nature of the effective parameters; therefore, a model is developed to attain the optimum post-mining land use for pit area through Fuzzy analytical hierarchy processing. As a case study, the model was implemented in Sungun copper mine in the Northwest of Iran. Forestry–lumber production was defined as the optimum post-mining land use containing the greatest relative importance coefficient 3.019 for the pit area in this mine.