Quarterly Issue 3 and Podcast Episode 3 now available, LDI membership drive coming soon
VANCOUVER, BC (August 10, 2020) — The Landform Design Institute (LDI) has released the Summer 2020 edition of the Landform Design Quarterly and the third episode of the new Getting Closure podcast series, and has set a date of September 1, 2020, to open the Institute to memberships.
The third edition of the Quarterly describes the LDI’s upcoming position paper, which will call for the global mining community to rally around a set of common goals in support of landform design. It also details the LDI Board’s “gap analysis,” which compares the current state of practice in mining against the activities companies promised for mine reclamation. Several task forces are being created to address the gaps, which are being placed into 10 broad categories.
In the third episode of Getting Closure, LDI Board Member and TAP Chair Mike O’Kane interviews Corinne Unger, an Australia-based specialist in mine rehabilitation and closure planning who has undertaken research on abandoned mines and post-mining land use around the world and is currently working on her PhD. Their conversation, conducted over Skype between Calgary and Brisbane, covers the importance of good mentors, navigating an industry where women are usually in the minority, and trying to convince mines and regulators to incorporate a social dimension into mine planning. Several more podcasts are planned for the coming months, and the series will soon be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms.
For the first podcast, O’Kane spoke in person with LDI founder Gord McKenna in February on the decades of experiences they each had that led to the founding of the Institute. In April, Mike held a virtual meeting with Mark Logsdon, principal geochemist of Geochimica Inc. in Aptos, California, to discuss Mark’s many years working in geology and the importance of mentorship.
Starting September 1, students and working professionals will be welcome to join the LDI to help the Institute fulfill its ambitious mandate: making landform design routine worldwide by 2030. The goal is to sign up 200 new members by the one-year anniversary of September 30, 2020. Both individual and student memberships are available.
Members will be able to take advantage of several benefits, including immediate access to a planned series of discussion papers and technical reports the Institute will be producing as a result of the Board’s gap analysis. These publications will be based on literature reviews, interviews with experts, and the experiences of the Board and TAP members.
Other membership benefits will include access to a members directory and landform design tools; introductory lectures and a case history database; a 20% discount on landform design courses and case history symposia; and regular alerts for podcasts, events, publications, news items, and courses. Members can also take advantage of networking opportunities at virtual and in-person events.
In the fall, the Institute will be focused on signing up members, completing the gap analysis and formalizing the task forces, preparing for the first case history symposium in early 2021, and preparing the position paper, which will describe the current state of mine reclamation, identify relevant gaps and solutions, explore areas of potential synergy with related international initiatives, and set out a vision for where the mining industry needs to be in 10 years to be consistently achieving successful mine reclamation.