Mining exploration infrastructure affects biophysical habitat characteristics and ground-dwelling arthropod communities

Abstract

Monitoring of environmental impacts of mining activities typically focuses on the main operation footprint, neglecting exploration infrastructure like tracks, roads, and drill pads. These areas are cleared of native vegetation and impacts on the surrounding environment can be both cumulative and enigmatic. Here, we study the impacts of mining exploration infrastructure on habitat characteristics and ground-dwelling arthropod communities in the Midwest region of Western Australia. The study was conducted at three mine sites, each with three infrastructure types: maintained tracks, unmaintained tracks, and drill pads along transects extending 100 m away from the disturbance into remnant vegetation. Habitat characteristics were measured, and arthropods collected from pitfall traps along these transects and identified using COI metabarcoding. The overall arthropod community and two indicator groups, ants (Formicidae) and springtails (Collembola) - were used to measure arthropod responses to changes in response to habitat disturbance. Whilst changes in habitat were only visible to 10 m from the disturbance, impacts on arthropod communities could be detected up to 100 m into the remnant vegetation, and these responses were more complex. In general, we found similar patterns expressed in the compositional changes for arthropods overall and between our chosen indicator groups, but they were not the same across all sites and infrastructure types. Our results demonstrate the utility of bulk arthropod metabarcoding and different arthropod indicator groups for documenting the effects of fine-scale habitat destruction, degradation, or disturbance. They also highlight the need to monitor the negative impacts of mineral exploration on the environment.