Surface mining refers to the removal of the terrain surface to access minerals underneath. (admin, 2019a). Removing the terrain surface, or overburden, to access the mineral beneath is often more cost-effective than gouging tunnels and subterranean shafts to access minerals underground. This method is often considered safer, as well, and doesn’t require extensive electricity rigging and water piping (admin, 2019a).
There are various types of surface mining and approaches for each. The main types of surface mining include:
- Strip Mining: Strip mining removes a thin strip of overburden, (meaning soil or earth) from the desired deposit, then, the overburden behind the deposit is dumped and the desired deposits extracted (admin, 2022a). If the ore is too far under the surface, the process of strip mining becomes impractical and needlessly damaging to the terrain (admin, 2019b).
- Open-pit mining: This is the most common and it is exactly as the name suggests – there’s usually a big hole, or a pit in the ground, which is created by drilling and blasting with explosives (admin, 2022a). Open pit mine usually produce a vast amount of ore without the costly process of removing overburden (admin, 2022a).
- High Wall Mining: This is a combination of sub-surface and surface mining techniques. The idea is that you start off with an open pit mine and then you drill or bore through the walls in order to extract the resources (admin, 2022b).
- Mountain top Removal: Mountaintop Removal Mining is highly controversial, and best suited for retrieving mass amounts of minerals, usually coal, from mountain peaks. The process involves blasting the overburden with explosives above the mineral seam to be mined (admin, 2019c).
- Dredging: This is a surface mining process where the mineral materials from the bottom of the water such as rivers, oceans and lakes are retrieved (admin, 2022b).
At its core, surface mining is the extraction of minerals, ores, and other valuable geological materials from the Earth’s surface. Surface mining operates by removing the topsoil and overlying rock, often called overburden, to expose the targeted material. This approach is generally favored when the deposit is relatively shallow and located near the surface, making it economically viable to remove large quantities of overburden to access it (Team, 2025).
