ESPROMUD - Earth Surface Processes, Materials Use and Urban Development: Understanding the Human Contribution to Global Geomorphological Change

Scientific Advisory Committee
Chair: Ian Douglas (UK), Members: Wolfgang Eder (UNESCO), Michel Hermelin (Colombia), Carroll Ann Hodges (USA), L.K. Jeje (Nigeria), Bedrich Moldan (Czech Republic), Waite Osterkamp (USA), Fredrik Wolff (Norway)

The ESPROMUD project examines the ways mining and urbanization change the rates and magnitude of the transformation of the earth's surface by geologic and geomorphic processes. It set out to establish the total quantities of material shifted by extractive industries and in the building and operation of towns and cities and their supporting infrastructure. The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and SCOPE have brought together earth scientists concerned about the human dimensions of geological processes to evaluate how the growth of cities and extractive industries has affected the rates and nature of geomorphic change.

The project convened workshops in five continents, bringing together some 120 natural and social scientists from 30 different countries to examine the variety of situations, under different climates and cultures, in which the winning of mineral resources and the expansion of human settlements transform the earth's surface.

The role of earth surface materials flows in urban development is becoming more critical and pressure grows to reduce both the use of newly-won aggregates and to recycle construction and demolition waste and other building components. In developed countries, re-use of former urban land is leading to new ideas about making the re-use of materials from demolished buildings and urban redevelopment. Fiscal measures are making the use of recycled materials more attractive economically.

This introduces a wide range of new considerations into urban materials flows and the role of human activities in geological processes. The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami reminds us that catastrophic geologic events exceed any people made or human-induced disaster in terms of earth surface change, but currently in terms of the erosion caused by agencies such as wind and running water from day to day and year to year, the mass of material deliberately shifted by human action far exceeds that shifted by natural processes.

The ESPROMUD findings thus suggest we need a scale-linked feedback from global climate and biogeochemical cycles to the local deliberate material flow and land surface modifications that will determine how those global changes impact upon individual cities and communities. Furthermore, continued interest in the findings of the project has meant interest in further work related to both the mining and the urban development sides of the impacts on earth surface processes.

The scientific synthesis monograph, to be published in the SCOPE series, summarises both the outcomes of those workshops and the relevant scientific literature to provide a picture of human beings as the most powerful agents of land surface change over much of the world, and to indicate some of the beneficial and harmful consequences of these transformations. The volume concludes by addressing ways in which the uses of earth surface materials and the growth of urban areas could be modified to reduce demands for raw materials and to achieve greater sustainability.

Contents of the forthcoming synthesis volume include:

1. People as the most powerful surficial surface process agent at the present day: review of studies of men and women as geological agents.
2. Significance of urban growth and materials use in the 20th century. Materials flow analysis and the "total materials requirement" concept.
3. Global shift of materials by mining and quarrying: establishing the magnitudes of the commodity flows and the "hidden" (overburden and soil removal) flows.
4. Large and small-scale mining and quarrying impacts on the environment- including artisanal mining in the tropics; mine tailings dam collapses and long lasting chemical legacies from mining in historic times.
5. Modification of rivers and coasts as a consequence of mining: examples such as the Sacramento River in California, the Thames flood plain in England, the Selangor river in Malaysia and the Namibian Coast.
6. Special problems associated with mining and quarrying in arid, permafrost and humid tropical environments:
7. Urban impacts on rivers: Erosion and sedimentation in urban areas, channelization and its downstream consequences; impacts of flood defences.
8. Urban impacts on the coasts: including examples from USA, Morocco, Egypt, Chile and Singapore.
9. Case studies of integrated impacts in the San Loiza basin, Puerto Rico.
10. Case studies of integrated impacts in the Besaya basin, northern Spain
11. Reducing the impact of mining and urbanisation: steps towards greater sustainability
12. Conclusions: future scientific tasks, policy implications and sustainability needs

Selected articles and book chapters that have been published during the course of the project:

Cendrero, A. and I. Douglas. 1996 Earth surface processes, materials use and urban development; project aims and methodological approach. Abstracts with programs, GSA Annual Meeting, Denver: A-79.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2005 The geomorphic and land use impacts of mining. In Rajaram, V., Dutta, A. and Parameswaran, K. (eds.) Sustainable mining practices- a global perspective. A.A. Balkema, Leiden, The Netherlands. 60-80.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2002 Airport construction: materials use and geomorphic change. Journal of Air Transport Management 9, 177-185.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2002 Material flows due to mining and urbanization. In Ayres, Robert U. and Ayres, Leslie W. (eds.) Handbook of Industrial Ecology. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 351-364.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2002 The human dimensions of geomorphological work in Britain. Journal of Industrial Ecology 4 (2) 9-33.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2001 Materials flows for mining and quarrying. In Douglas, I. (ed.) Causes and consequences of global environmental change (Volume 3 of Munn, T. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change). John Wiley, Chichester, 454-461.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 2000 The contribution of small-scale and informal mining to disturbance of the earth's surface by mineral extraction. Mining and Energy Research Network Research Bulletin No. 15, 1999/2000, 153-161.

Douglas, I and Lawson, N. 1998 The use of earth materials in urban metabolism: contrasts between Europe and Asia. Poster presentation at the International NWO Conference "Beyond Sustainability – integrating behavioural, economic and environmental research", Amsterdam, The Netherlands 19-20 November 1998.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N 1998 Problems associated with establishing reliable estimates of materials flows linked to extractive industries. In Kleijn, R., Bringezu, S., Fischer-Kowalski, M. and Palme, V. (eds.) ConAccount workshop Ecologizing Societal Metabolism: Designing Scenarios for sustainable Materials Management. November 21st. 1998, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. CML report 148 Section Substances & Products. Centre of Environmental Science (CML), Leiden, The Netherlands, 127-134.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 1997 An earth science approach to assessing the disturbance of the earth's surface by mining. Mining and Environmental Research Network Research Bulletin No. 11/12, 1997 Special Edition, 37-43.

Douglas, I. and Lawson, N. 1997 An earth science approach to material flows generated by urbanisation and mining. In Bringezu, S., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Kleijn, R. and Palme, Y. (eds.) Regional and national material flows accounting: from paradigm to practice of sustainability, (Wuppertal Special 4), Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Wuppertal, p. 109-118.

Lawson, N., Douglas, I., Garvin, S., McGrath, C., Manning, D. and Vetterlein, J. 2001 Recycling construction and demolition wastes- the case for Britain. Environmental Management and Health. 12 (2) 146-157.

Lawson, N. and Douglas, I. 2000 Urban metabolism, materials flows and sustainable development: a geoenvironmental perspective. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Geoenvironmental Technology and Global Sustainable Development, August 9 - 13, 1998 Boston (Danvers) Massachusetts, USA, The Lowell Volume 1, CEEST - University of Massachusetts, Lowell, 3-12.

Osterkamp, W. R. 2000 Earth-Surface Processes, Materials Use, and Urban Development -- A Case Study of the San Juan Metropolitan Area, Northeastern Puerto Rico. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2000/of00-006/htm/urban.htm

Rivas, V. and A. Cendrero. 1996 Human influence on surface processes in the Besaya basin, Spain Abstracts with programs, GSA Annual Meeting, Denver: A-81.

Last up-dated May 2008