616
September 2019
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC
ENGINEERING &
REMOTE SENSING
J
ournal
S
taff
Publisher ASPRS
Editor-In-Chief Alper Yilmaz
Assistant Editor Jie Shan
Assistant Director — Publications Rae Kelley
Electronic Publications Manager/Graphic Artist
Matthew Austin
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
is the official journal
of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. It is
devoted to the exchange of ideas and information about the applications of
photogrammetry, remote sensing, and geographic information systems. The
technical activities of the Society are conducted through the following Technical
Divisions: Geographic Information Systems, Photogrammetric Applications,
Lidar, Primary Data Acquisition, Professional Practice, and Remote Sensing
Applications. Additional information on the functioning of the Technical
Divisions and the Society can be found in the Yearbook issue of
PE&RS.
Correspondence relating to all business and editorial matters pertaining to this
and other Society publications should be directed to the American Society for
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Maryland 20814-2144, including inquiries, memberships, subscriptions,
changes in address, manuscripts for publication, advertising, back issues,
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493-0290; the fax number is 225-408-4422; web address is
.
PE&RS.
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Copyright by the American Society for Photogrammetry and
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Plunging deep into the ground, the gaping hole of an open-pit mine is unmistakable
from space. People have excavated such pits on every continent except Antarctica.
The mine pictured here has been growing vertically and horizontally near Phalabor-
wa, South Africa, for more than 50 years. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on
Landsat 8 acquired this image of the Palabora mine on July 2, 2019. It is South
Africa’s largest open-pit mine, measuring almost 2 kilometers wide. It is about half
the width of the world’s largest open-pit mine, which is at Bingham Canyonin Utah.
Copper mining began at Palabora in 1965, and by 1967 the open-pit mine was fully
operational. The hole reached 800 meters down into the Earth before the depletion
of resources made it uneconomical to continue mining in the pit. Operations moved
underground (below the pit) and mostly out of sight in the early 2000s. The new
mining method, known as block caving, involves extracting rock below an ore body,
letting the ore break under its own weight, and then hauling the ore back to the
surface.
Three years after the start of underground mining at Palabora, cracks grew in the
wall of the pit until the northwest wall collapsed. The inset image shows a detailed
view of that landslide, which is still visible in 2019. The collapse damaged some
infrastructure—roads, power and water lines, and a railway line—but critical mine
infrastructure stayed intact and underground mining continues there today.
The site has become a case study in the challenges in transitioning from surface
to underground mining. For example, researchers started using satellite data to
improve the models that predict how mining underground will deform the surface.
People were mining South Africa’s copper and iron resources long before the advent
of open pit mines. Some archaeological estimates date mining artifacts back to at
least 800 CE. In neighboring Kruger National Park, more than 250 archaeological
sites show signs of human occupation back about 1 million years ago.
For
more
information,
visit
php?id=145366.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens and Allison Nussbaum, using
Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and topographic data from the Shut-
tle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Story by Kathryn Hansen.
