Nevada Pit Lakes

Residual pit lakes from mining are often dangerous to sample for water quality. Thus, pit lakes may be rarely (or never) sampled. This study developed new technology in which water-sampling devices mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were used to sample five pit lakes in Nevada, USA during one week in 2017. Three of these pit lakes are located on public lands and two are located on private land owned by mining entities. Water-quality datasets from two of the three pit lakes on public lands, Dexter and Clipper are presented here. The current conditions of the Dexter pit lake were assessed by examining cation and anion concentration trends over a 17-year time period since the pit lake was last sampled in 2000. We compared our sampling data to prior water-quality data from the Dexter pit lake received from the authors of Balistrieri et al. (2006). This comparison for the Dexter pit lake showed the effect of evapoconcentration in increasing cation and anion concentrations. This approach can potentially incorporate the use of additional multi-parameter probes: pH, oxygen concentration, turbidity and chlorophyll. Some limitations of this UAV water sampling methodology are battery duration, weather conditions and payload capacity.