The University Complutense of Madrid (UCM) (https://www.ucm.es/) has 2 teams participating in the Project, the Geomorphologic Mining Restoration group (Grupo de Restauración Geomorfológica) – GMR, and the Acid Mine Drainage group – DAM.
The GMR group includes several worldwide experts with broad international experience, being able to transfer the training levels of the GeoFluvTM -Natural Regrade method for geomorphic restoration. They also collaborate with the developers of the Talus Royal®, SIBERIA – Landscape Evolution Model and of the two-dimensional hydraulic model Iber.
The team is also an Associated Beneficiary in the projects LIFE ECORESTCLAY (LIFE 12 BIO/ES/000926) and LIFE TECMINE (LIFE16 ENV/ES/000159). They have experience in the Alto Tajo since 2007, with two PhDs, six scientific papers, three pilot projects of geomorphologic restoration, and dozens of contributions in national conferences and publications, as the main scientific outcomes. The team has received remarkable awards: 2015: prize on Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy (shared with CAOBAR, S. A.); 2016: prize of the UCM on Knowledge and Technology Transference. Together with CAOBAR, S. A., they made possible the recognition of the GMR techniques as BAT, in the European Union.
The other team, evaluates the potential environmental risks arising from active and abandoned mining operations, namely the Acid Mine Drainage (DAM). They have got many years of experience on chemical environmental hazards and research projects, covering several mining districts in Chile and Spain. The main outcomes of this group in the last 10 years, include the supervision of more than 15 MSc theses on environmental geology, surpassing the 50 international papers, in more than 100 articles published.
One of its members is cofounder of the GEMM (https://www.aulados.net/ GEMM/GEMM.html) – devoted to the understanding of contamination by mineral deposits, main methods of mining and metallurgical processes, processes of geochemical transfer of metals and metalloids to the atmosphere, soil, water and biota -, that is actually supporting this LIFE Project.
