Uranium mining or invasives?

For another one of my classes, Ecological Risk Assessment, I had to read a 40 page scientific paper on an ecological risk assessment looking to quantify the risks posed to a watershed in the Northern section of Australia. There were two different types of risk, the ones posed by mining just upriver of the site, and the ones posed by the landscape. The mining operation was an example of point source pollution, whereas the diffuse landscape effects were an example of non point source contamination.

The risk due to mining was quantified by looking at the Uranium, Manganese, and two other chemicals frequently found dispersing from mines that greatly affect the environment and water quality. The overall risk from this chemical contamination was summed up and compared to the risk from the landscape.

The landscape was composed of the damage from feral pigs, fire, invasive species, and the effect of water rising due to climate change. Invasive species, specifically para grass, was shown to pose the greatest risk to the watershed as a whole, followed by fire and feral pigs. The water rising due to climate change did not seem to be a particularly effective aspect to measure and predict for a few reasons: climate change modelling is not overly accurate looking 100 years into the future, and in this situation, the rest of the landscape was assumed to stay the same, with only the water quantity and salinity increasing over time. These reasons were explained in the paper.

In brief, the conclusions of the study were that the diffuse landscape level damage posed a greater risk to the watershed than uranium mining did. Wait... really? Yes, according to this ERA paper. The paper aroused many unanswered questions about the mine. Was it privately owned or government owned? When does management change hands and how will that change the effects of the mining operation? When will the mine close? Why were only those four chemicals analyzed, yet the larger landscape effects of the land and the longer term effects of the mine were not included?

My discussion section picked apart the article chosen by the professor, to some extent with his blessing. Not surprisingly, I turned out to be one of the few (if not the only one) who read the entirety of the 40 pages.  I contributed a decent amount to the discussion, and as a follow up of sorts decided to make my blog post about the paper. A couple hours or so of my time were devoted to reading and thinking about this paper, so I figured I might as well continue down that road and make this about it too.

I am not sure if this link to the paper will work or not, but here it is: Bayliss et al 2012