Papers by John Baeten
Ambio, Jan 5, 2017
This paper examines the water quality legacies of historic and current iron mining in the Mesabi ... more This paper examines the water quality legacies of historic and current iron mining in the Mesabi Range, the most productive iron range in the history of North America, producing more than 42% of the world's iron ore in the 1950s. Between 1893 and 2016, 3.5 × 10(9) t of iron ore were shipped from the Mesabi Range to steel plants throughout the world. We map historic sites and quantities of iron mining, ore processing, water use, and tailings deposition within subwatershed boundaries. We then map the locations of impaired lakes within HUC-12 subwatershed boundaries within the Mesabi Range, using government datasets created for US federal Clean Water Act reporting. Comparing watersheds with and without historic mining activity, watersheds with historic mining activity currently contain a greater percentage of impaired lakes than control watersheds within the same range. These results suggest that historic iron ore mining and processing in the Mesabi Range affected water quality on ...
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Historical Methods, 2020
This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental c... more This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental change over extensive spatial and temporal scales, even in systems such as rivers and streams that are comparatively difficult to digitize. We used a drawing tablet and stylus to digitize features found on historical Army Corps maps across the spatially extensive landscape of the Lower Wabash River’s riparian zone, in Indiana and Illinois, USA. The methodology allows for an efficient reconstruction of sinuous and irregular environmental features, such as sloughs, and demonstrates the utility of digitizing historical maps to understand the evolution of surface water quantity and location across a landscape. We then compared these historical data to contemporary environmental datasets for the same study area to understand what changes have occurred over a 100 year period. This reveals that the hydroscape of the Lower Wabash River has been significantly altered by past human activity, notably through the reduction of swamps, wetlands, and sandbars, and the increase in drainage ditches and overall stream area. Notably, many of these historical alterations are not captured within current environmental datasets.
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Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2020
This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental c... more This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental change over extensive spatial and temporal scales, even in systems such as rivers and streams that are comparatively difficult to digitize. We used a drawing tablet and stylus to digitize features found on historical Army Corps maps across the spatially extensive landscape of the Lower Wabash River’s riparian zone, in Indiana and Illinois, USA. The methodology allows for an efficient reconstruction of sinuous and irregular environmental features, such as sloughs, and demonstrates the utility of digitizing historical maps to understand the evolution of surface water quantity and location across a landscape. We then compared these historical data to contemporary environmental datasets for the same study area to understand what changes have occurred over a 100 year period. This reveals that the hydroscape of the Lower Wabash River has been significantly altered by past human activity, notably through the reduction of swamps, wetlands, and sandbars, and the increase in drainage ditches and overall stream area. Notably, many of these historical alterations are not captured within current environmental datasets.
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Water History, 2018
Beginning in 1910, new technologies for mining and processing low-grade iron ore created novel en... more Beginning in 1910, new technologies for mining and processing low-grade iron ore created novel environmental challenges for Minnesota’s iron mining communities. Unlike earlier high-grade iron ore which required little processing before shipping, low-grade iron ore required extensive processing near mining sites, and that processing created vast quantities of finely-ground tailings that mobilized into nearby streams, lakes, and communities. In Lake Superior’s Mesabi Range, low-grade iron ores brought significant economic benefits, but they were coupled with equally significant environmental transformations. Drawing on archival records from the first legal case in Minnesota over the pollution of surface waters from migrating mine waste, this paper asks: how did communities in the Mesabi Range respond to the new environmental challenges from low-grade iron ore? How did these negotiations between Mesabi communities, mining companies and the state play out in the courts? How did these court battles shape state mining policy? How have local heritage organizations and state agencies remembered and memorialized these environmental legacies?
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Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment , 2018
This paper examines the water quality legacies of historic and current iron mining in the Mesabi ... more This paper examines the water quality legacies of historic and current iron mining in the Mesabi Range, the most productive iron range in the history of North America, producing more than 42% of the world’s iron ore in the 1950s. Between 1893 and 2016, 3.5 × 109 t of iron ore were shipped from the Mesabi Range to steel plants throughout the world. We map historic sites and quantities of iron mining, ore processing, water use, and tailings deposition within subwatershed boundaries. We then map the locations of impaired lakes within HUC-12 subwatershed boundaries within the Mesabi Range, using government datasets created for US federal Clean Water Act reporting. Comparing watersheds with and without historic mining activity, watersheds with historic mining activity currently contain a greater percentage of impaired lakes than control watersheds within the same range. These results suggest that historic iron ore mining and processing in the Mesabi Range affected water quality on a landscape scale, and these legacies persist long after the mines have closed. This paper outlines a novel spatial approach that land managers and policy makers can apply to other landscapes to assess the effects of past mining activity on watershed health.
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This dissertation explores the intersection between mining
technology, industrial heritage, and e... more This dissertation explores the intersection between mining
technology, industrial heritage, and environmental history, using iron
mining in the Mesabi Range of the Lake Superior Iron District as its
core case study. What impact did technological shifts in iron mining
and ore processing have on the environment of the Lake Superior
basin? How did the environmental changes wrought from low-grade
iron ore mining and processing, such as the expansion of open-pits
and the production of tailings, affect different communities in
Minnesota’s Mesabi Range? And finally, how have the environmental
legacies of iron mining been remembered and memorialized, or
ignored and forgotten?
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A B S T R A C T For decades, the Lake Superior Iron District produced a significant majority of t... more A B S T R A C T For decades, the Lake Superior Iron District produced a significant majority of the world's iron used in steel production. Chief among these was the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota, a vast deposit of hematite and magnetic taconite ores stretching for over 100 miles in length. Iron ore mining in the Mesabi Range involved three major phases: direct shipping ores (1847–1970s), washable ores (1907– 1980s), and taconite (1947–current). Each phase of iron mining used different technologies to extract and process ore. Producing all of this iron yielded a vast landscape of mine waste. This paper uses a historical GIS to illuminate the spatial extent of mining across the Lake Superior Iron District, to locate where low-grade ore processing took place, and to identify how and where waste was produced. Our analysis shows that the technological shift to low-grade ore mining placed new demands on the environment, primarily around processing plants. Direct shipping ore mines produced less mine waste than low-grade ore mines, and this waste was confined to the immediate vicinity of mines themselves. Low-grade ore processing, in contrast, created more dispersed waste landscapes as tailings mobilized from the mines themselves into waterbodies and human communities.
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A B S T R A C T For decades, the Lake Superior Iron District produced a significant majority of t... more A B S T R A C T For decades, the Lake Superior Iron District produced a significant majority of the world's iron used in steel production. Chief among these was the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota, a vast deposit of hematite and magnetic taconite ores stretching for over 100 miles in length. Iron ore mining in the Mesabi Range involved three major phases: direct shipping ores (1847–1970s), washable ores (1907– 1980s), and taconite (1947–current). Each phase of iron mining used different technologies to extract and process ore. Producing all of this iron yielded a vast landscape of mine waste. This paper uses a historical GIS to illuminate the spatial extent of mining across the Lake Superior Iron District, to locate where low-grade ore processing took place, and to identify how and where waste was produced. Our analysis shows that the technological shift to low-grade ore mining placed new demands on the environment, primarily around processing plants. Direct shipping ore mines produced less mine waste than low-grade ore mines, and this waste was confined to the immediate vicinity of mines themselves. Low-grade ore processing, in contrast, created more dispersed waste landscapes as tailings mobilized from the mines themselves into waterbodies and human communities.
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Conference Presentations by John Baeten
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Maps - Spatial Histories by John Baeten
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Papers, Chapters, and other writing by John Baeten
Technical Report, Michigan Technological University, 2018
The Straits of Mackinac hydraulically link Lakes Michigan and Huron and are wide and deep enough ... more The Straits of Mackinac hydraulically link Lakes Michigan and Huron and are wide and deep enough (average depth 20 m) to permit the same average water level in both water bodies, technically making them two lobes of a single large lake. The combined Michigan–Huron system forms the largest lake in the world by surface area and the fourth largest by volume, containing nearly 8% of the world's surface freshwater. The Straits of Mackinac serve as a hub for recreation, tourism, commercial shipping, as well as commercial, sport and subsistence fishing (several tribes retain fishing rights in these 1836 treaty-ceded waters). Line 5 runs for 535 miles within the state of Michigan, from Wisconsin, under the Straits of Mackinac, through the center of the state to Sarnia, Ontario. This assessment is limited to the potential impacts of spills specifically from the segment of Line 5 that crosses the Straits; it did not consider other portions of the line, many of which are adjacent to the Great Lakes and cross other waters or wetlands.
Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) was commissioned January 12, 2018, to perform the risk analysis. By January 26, all contracts and agreements were transmitted to the partners. Work began on February 1, 2018. The Principal Investigator Dr. Guy Meadows and Project Coordinator Amanda Grimm assembled a team of 41 experts in relevant areas of engineering, hydrodynamic modeling, risk assessment, public health, ecology, social sciences, and economics. The project team comprises faculty and technical staff from seven Michigan universities, two out of state universities, and three consulting organizations; assistance was also provided by two independent contractors (former DoE and AFPM staff) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).
The report concludes with total potential liability estimate of approximately 1.8 billion dollars for response, clean up, restoration, and some damages. This cost estimate was made as comprehensive as possible, but confident estimates for several categories of cost could not be produced within the scope of this short-term project. These include the cost of repairing the pipeline itself, the costs of irreversible damage to resources for which valuation estimates are not available, human health impacts, value-added commercial fish products, subsistence fisheries, and compensatory habitat costs. Comparison to other estimates of the costs of a Straits Pipeline spill should be made with caution, taking into account differences in assumptions and varying included costs.
https://mipetroleumpipelines.com/document/independent-risk-analysis-straits-pipelines-final-report
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Papers by John Baeten
technology, industrial heritage, and environmental history, using iron
mining in the Mesabi Range of the Lake Superior Iron District as its
core case study. What impact did technological shifts in iron mining
and ore processing have on the environment of the Lake Superior
basin? How did the environmental changes wrought from low-grade
iron ore mining and processing, such as the expansion of open-pits
and the production of tailings, affect different communities in
Minnesota’s Mesabi Range? And finally, how have the environmental
legacies of iron mining been remembered and memorialized, or
ignored and forgotten?
Conference Presentations by John Baeten
Maps - Spatial Histories by John Baeten
Papers, Chapters, and other writing by John Baeten
Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) was commissioned January 12, 2018, to perform the risk analysis. By January 26, all contracts and agreements were transmitted to the partners. Work began on February 1, 2018. The Principal Investigator Dr. Guy Meadows and Project Coordinator Amanda Grimm assembled a team of 41 experts in relevant areas of engineering, hydrodynamic modeling, risk assessment, public health, ecology, social sciences, and economics. The project team comprises faculty and technical staff from seven Michigan universities, two out of state universities, and three consulting organizations; assistance was also provided by two independent contractors (former DoE and AFPM staff) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).
The report concludes with total potential liability estimate of approximately 1.8 billion dollars for response, clean up, restoration, and some damages. This cost estimate was made as comprehensive as possible, but confident estimates for several categories of cost could not be produced within the scope of this short-term project. These include the cost of repairing the pipeline itself, the costs of irreversible damage to resources for which valuation estimates are not available, human health impacts, value-added commercial fish products, subsistence fisheries, and compensatory habitat costs. Comparison to other estimates of the costs of a Straits Pipeline spill should be made with caution, taking into account differences in assumptions and varying included costs.
https://mipetroleumpipelines.com/document/independent-risk-analysis-straits-pipelines-final-report
technology, industrial heritage, and environmental history, using iron
mining in the Mesabi Range of the Lake Superior Iron District as its
core case study. What impact did technological shifts in iron mining
and ore processing have on the environment of the Lake Superior
basin? How did the environmental changes wrought from low-grade
iron ore mining and processing, such as the expansion of open-pits
and the production of tailings, affect different communities in
Minnesota’s Mesabi Range? And finally, how have the environmental
legacies of iron mining been remembered and memorialized, or
ignored and forgotten?
Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) was commissioned January 12, 2018, to perform the risk analysis. By January 26, all contracts and agreements were transmitted to the partners. Work began on February 1, 2018. The Principal Investigator Dr. Guy Meadows and Project Coordinator Amanda Grimm assembled a team of 41 experts in relevant areas of engineering, hydrodynamic modeling, risk assessment, public health, ecology, social sciences, and economics. The project team comprises faculty and technical staff from seven Michigan universities, two out of state universities, and three consulting organizations; assistance was also provided by two independent contractors (former DoE and AFPM staff) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).
The report concludes with total potential liability estimate of approximately 1.8 billion dollars for response, clean up, restoration, and some damages. This cost estimate was made as comprehensive as possible, but confident estimates for several categories of cost could not be produced within the scope of this short-term project. These include the cost of repairing the pipeline itself, the costs of irreversible damage to resources for which valuation estimates are not available, human health impacts, value-added commercial fish products, subsistence fisheries, and compensatory habitat costs. Comparison to other estimates of the costs of a Straits Pipeline spill should be made with caution, taking into account differences in assumptions and varying included costs.
https://mipetroleumpipelines.com/document/independent-risk-analysis-straits-pipelines-final-report