Nicole M Smith

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Colorado School of Mines

Crustal magmatic systems that form volcanoes also produce mineral deposits that are important sources of critical metals. These include porphyry, epithermal, skarn, iron-oxide-copper-gold, and Carlin-type mineral deposits that form by magmatic-hydrothermal processes, magmatic sulfide deposits that form by purely igneous processes, and pegmatite dep...

The Madre de Dios Region of Peru faces significant deforestation largely due to a surge in artisanal-small scale gold mining (ASGM), propelled by rising gold prices. This study evaluates the full scope of ASGM activities on net CO2 emissions, accounting for both the deforestation that converts forests into mining territories and the emissions direc...

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the leading global source of anthropogenic mercury (Hg) release to the environment. Top-down mercury reduction efforts have had limited results, but a bottom-up embrace of cyanide (CN) processing could eventually displace mercury amalgamation for gold recovery. However, ASGM transitions to cyanidation...

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the leading global source of mercury pollution. Efforts to reduce or eliminate mercury use in ASGM have produced limited results, in part because they do not engage the complex socio-technical nature of mercury issues in ASGM. The paper takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the mercury issu...

This paper applies the concept of capitals in the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) to examine artisanal and small-scale mining livelihoods in the municipality of Marmato, Colombia and discusses the relevance of these findings to formalization efforts. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is an important and often traditional livelihood in...

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the leading global source of mercury pollution. Efforts to reduce or eliminate mercury use in ASGM have produced limited results, in part because they do not engage the complex socio-technical nature of mercury issues in ASGM. The paper takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the mercury issu...

Globally, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) provides a livelihood for approximately 20 million people directly and millions more indirectly. Despite its economic contributions and job creation for rural communities, the sector continues to be overlooked in local, regional, and national sustainable development plans. Voluntary gold certif...

Responsible mine closure and repurposing are key to contributing to sustainable development by ensuring successful environmental rehabilitation and reducing socioeconomic risks. However, mine closure has primarily focused on remediation and rehabilitation of mined lands with limited consideration of stakeholder perspectives and the broader social,...

Editor’s note: The aim of the Geology and Mining series is to introduce early career professionals and students to various aspects of mineral exploration, development, and mining in order to share the experiences and insight of each author on the myriad of topics involved with the mineral industry and the ways in which geoscientists contribute to e...

Editor’s note: The aim of the Geology and Mining series is to introduce early career professionals and students to various aspects of mineral exploration, development, and mining in order to share the experiences and insight of each author on the myriad of topics involved with the mineral industry and the ways in which geoscientists contribute to e...

In recent years, the formalization of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) activities has become a key strategy for governments to better govern and regulate the sector. While scholars have focused on examining the viability of formalization itself, little is known about the outcomes once ASGM operations become formal, or whether formalizat...

There is increasing recognition of the value from incorporating local and scientific hazard knowledge for diester risk management, but practical integration remains limited. Much management activity remains underpinned by information deficit thinking, which inherently valorizes scientific knowledge and devalorizes local knowledge. To move away from...

Cyanide (CN⁻) from gold processing effluents must be removed to protect human health and the environment. Reducing the use of chemical reagents is desirable for small centralized and decentralized facilities. In this work, we aimed to optimize the use of ultraviolet (UV) radiation coupled with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to enhance the rate and extent...

Pollution remediation decisions in developing communities are often made with limited technical data and stakeholder engagement. Local knowledge of contamination is oftentimes neglected, resulting in efforts that fail to align with community objectives. In this work, we propose a new approach for incorporating local knowledge on contamination into...

Sustainability reporting is one of the tools that contribute to incorporating sustainable development in the design of extractive operations (i.e., “Design for Sustainability”), and the demand for sustainability reports is increasing due to the increased focus on sustainable development and sustainable financing efforts. The extractive industries a...

The mining industry is increasingly turning to Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) programs to address a range of challenges including an aging workforce, increased public pressure, and growing demand for innovative technical solutions to mining problems. However, there is a lack of information on D&I initiatives in mining contexts, creating one barrier...

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of eng...

A global boom since the early 2000s has spurred major mining projects as well as major social conflicts, with South America standing as a central example on both fronts. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has also boomed, but academic research on mine-community conflicts has seldom considered the ASM sector. This paper examines the dynamics of...

There is interest in using locally available, low cost organic materials to attenuate heavy metals such as Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn found in surface waters in Peru and other developing regions. Here we mesh Spanish language publications, archived theses, and prior globally available literature to provide a tabulated synthesis of organic mater...

Environmental risk mitigation strategies employed in developing communities to address mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) have largely failed to meet community needs, resulting in their abandonment. In contrast, the water and wastewater treatment sector has gained more traction, introducing sustainable and community...

This paper identifies the intersecting technical and social factors that have fueled a history of conflict between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and large-scale mining, and more recently, their potential coexistence, in Marmato, Colombia. At Marmato, a vertically zoned ore body and corresponding vertically stacked land claims have in part...

In developing countries, remediation projects are predominantly implemented in areas with imminent risks due to human exposure routes. Projects experience challenges due to funding constraints derived from the history of legacy pollution and informal livelihood occupations in addition to political and economic instability and weak regulatory struct...

Using a creative capacity building (CCB) framework, co-design workshops among artisanal and small-scale gold miners, government officials, NGO representatives, and academics can provide an effective mechanism to identify pressing needs and desires of miners and operators towards formalization. As recently implemented in Peru, one of these workshops...

Gemstone value is often associated with origin, as the color, clarity, carat weight, cut, and other attributes of interest to consumers are often associated with the geological location of the stone. In this paper, we consider how the provenance of gemstones is harnessed through the ‘4P’ framework of product, price, promotion, and place. Both tanza...

Mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has captured global attention and concern for decades. Policy makers and development practitioners routinely promote awareness campaigns and technical assistance to address mercury use in ASGM; however, this focus obscures other barriers that stand in the way of addressing mercury emission...

Industry-university collaborations have been promoted as a way to introduce students to the day-to-day activities and internal workings of industry and enhance student understandings of their future roles as practicing engineers. As engineers are increasingly being called on to participate in gaining and maintaining the social license to operate fo...

Engineers and applied scientists form the backbone of the mining and petroleum industries, yet rarely figure in social science accounts of natural resource extraction. This article begins to fill that gap by ethnographically exploring how community conflicts have prompted engineers and applied scientists working in these industries to reconsider th...

The mining and energy industries present unique challenges to engineers, who must navigate sometimes competing responsibilities and codes of conduct, such as personal senses of right and wrong, professional ethics codes, and their employers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the current dominan...

The energy and extractive industries present unique challenges to engineers and geoscientists, who must navigate sometimes competing responsibilities and codes of conduct, such as personal senses of right and wrong, professional ethics codes, and their employers’ social responsibility (SR) policies. However, most engineering curriculums do not incl...

In sparsely populated areas of the interior of the Guianas, artisanal and small-scale gold mining has become the primary economic activity for local and migrant populations over the last three decades. Because of the adverse environmental and social impacts often associated with artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), these activities can be a sour...

The resource and energy industries present unique challenges to engineers, who must navigate sometimes competing responsibilities and codes of conduct, such as personal senses of right and wrong, professional ethics codes, and their employers' corporate social responsibility policies. This paper reports on preliminary research that seeks, first, to...

Since the early 1990s, Maasai men living in the Simanjiro district of northern Tanzania have worked as middlemen, buying and selling gemstones at Mererani, the only place in the world where the gemstone tanzanite is mined. While some men have struggled to make it, others have been quite lucrative in this booming mineral trade by gaining access to v...

East African pastoralists are increasingly diversifying their livelihoods to bring cash into the household. While men dominate these activities, women’s contributions to household economies through new market activities make them pivotal players in livelihood diversification. This article compares Maasai women’s income-earning activities at local m...

This paper brings together over two decades of research concerning the patterns and processes of livelihood diversification through migration among Maasai pastoralists and agro-pastoralists of northern Tanzania. Two case studies, one from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the other from the Simanjiro plains, jointly demonstrate the complexity of...

In this paper we review the effects of the 1997 drought and the 1998 El Nino rains on Maasai herders in northern Tanzania and explore with satellite data the degree to which we can expand the spatial scale of the analysis. Hierarchical cluster analyses of regional vegetation biomass trends are used and are associated with the results of surveys con...

Cultural anthropologists often use household-level interviews to understand components of land-use patterns and their effects upon human welfare. These results are extrapolated to some broader areas, usually without description. We present a method to make this extrapolation more rigorous. Evidence suggests that high precipitation in 1997/1998, ass...

Thesis (M.A.)--Colorado State University, 1999. Includes bibliographical references.