The influence of Strzelin Quarry Lakes on small reservoir retention resources in the regional catchments

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the analysis of the volume of water retained in Strzelin Quarry Lakes (SQLs). The volume of retained water was estimated by using the computational method, where the proposed reduction factors were determined with the use of DTM (digital terrain model). 2.6 hm3 of water was retained in seventeen Strzelin Quarry Lakes, of which 1.2 hm3 in the Ślęza River catchment (3 quarry lakes), and 1.4 hm3 in the Oława River catchment (14 quarry lakes). The obtained data of the volume of water retained in SQLs were compared to the balance of the water retention capacity of water reservoirs in the catchments of the Ślęza River (0.809 hm3), part of the WR08 Bystrzyca balance catchments (16.190 hm3) and in the catchments of the Oława River (2.782 hm3), part of the WR09 Nysa Kłodzka balance catchment (104.960 hm3). Inclusion the volume of water retained in Strzelin Quarry Lakes in the small scale water retention (reservoirs and ponds) balance would increase the volume of retained water by 156.0% in the Ślęza catchment (by 7.8% in the WR08 Bystrzyca balance catchment) and by 49.5% in the Oława catchment (by 1,3% in the WR09 Nysa Kłodzka balance catchment). Under favorable hydrogeological and geomorphological conditions water reclamation of the excavations may be one of the main aspects of increasing the retention capacity of the catchment, what is particularly important in areas characterized by low water resources.

Effect of Hydraulic Structure on Mitigating Extreme Hydrological Conditions of a Small River in the Temperate Zone (Główna River, Central Europe)

“…In the context of the water balance, viable possibilities in the scope of increasing water availability are offered in reference to outflow regulation through an increase in retention. These objectives are implemented with the application of natural forms of land use [6] as well as technical solutions (dams, weirs) and reclamation of abandoned open pit mines to water reservoirs, artificial mine lakes, or quarry lakes [7][8][9][10]. The scale of activity primarily depends on the natural features of the environment and the economic needs of a given region.…”

The Assessment of the Quality and Quantity of Water Retained in Closed Granite Quarries with the View to Mitigate the Effects of Droughts in Agriculture

“…These are former excavations of clay, sand and gravel [18,[25][26][27], stone quarries [20,[26][27][28][29][30], open-cast coal [18,[25][26][27][31][32][33][34] and lignite mines [26,27,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37], as well as open-cast ore metal mines [18,25,27,34]. When the mining process, and thus the dewatering of the pit, is discontinued, they often fill with groundwater, rainfall and surface runoff, which results in the emergence of mine or quarry lakes [17,20,21,36,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49].…”

“…In particular, most pit lakes were formed in Canada [25,27,31,44,64], the USA [25,27,38,65,66], the Czech Republic [27,63], Australia [22,27,34,44] and Germany [22,27,34,35,39,42,44,67,68]. But in recent decades, hundreds of new mine or quarry lakes have been created, including in many other countries, e.g., China [24,69,70], Italy [19,48], Indonesia [63] Ireland [22], France [52], Poland [22,27,37,49,60,63], Sweden [51], the U.K. [31], South Africa [25], Greece [34] and Spain [27,59,63].…”

“…The potential use of mine and quarry lake water depends, however, on the water quantity and quality [16,17,21,32,35,39,44,46,50,52,67,72,79,[81][82][83][84]. The volume of water retained in quarry lakes or small mine lakes varies and it may range from several thousand m 3 to several (or more than ten) million m 3 [20,22,27,34,40,[47][48][49]59,78,80,85]. However, most of the publications on mine lakes in the subject literature discuss coal and lignite mines, where the volume of the retained water ranges from 30-60 million m 3 , sometimes exceeding 100 million m 3 , and often reaching even up to 330-350 million m 3 [27,32,36,44,63,67,81,[86][87][88][89][90].…”

“…The creation of mine and quarry lakes may also be a partial answer to meeting the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive [22,96]. Furthermore, it may become an important activity for increasing water resources and their sustainable and reasonable management both in local and regional terms [10,20,22,47,49,75,[99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106]. In this approach, mine and quarry lakes may be used, for among other purposes, to collect and retain water that is later used, for example, as a source of potable or industrial water supply, for aquaculture and fish farming and for irrigation in agriculture and horticulture [19,21,[27][28][29]31,35,67,70,71,74,76,79].…”