For possible future mining activities in the sensitive Arcitc environment, this Regional Baseline Assessment (RBA) for South Greenland identifies, describes and maps available information on geological and environmental chemistry background levels, biodiversity as well as human use and cultural heritage background information of the area.
Based on the current information, an integrated spatial overlay analysis was compiled, which highlights areas with potential conflict zones between possible future mining activities and areas of biological, human and heritage values interest. The purpose of the project is to provide a basis for supporting environmentally sound planning and regulation of mining activities by summarising existing regional background information supplemented with new studies and making these results operational and easily accessible.
The area in South Greenland was selected by the Environmental Agency for Mineral Resource Activities (EAMRA) in dialogue with DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (at Aarhus University) and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR) as a pilot region for the project because of the large potential for mining activities, several ongoing mining activities, and lack of overview of environmental and biodiversity conflict zones. Based on the experience from this report, other regions will be selected and analysed.
The available information is presented and described on a general level in the report and supported by overview maps. The full data are given in NatureMap.gl and an integrated project-specific webGIS (rba.eamra.gl).