Proceedings of ISERME 2021 ISERME 2021 106 Assessment of Rehabilitation Options for Environmental Impacts of Abandoned Mines Kavirathne SR, Udayanga RI, Keerthi T, Gunawardana ADTJ, * Chaminda SP and Jayawardena CL Department of Earth Resources Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka *Corresponding author – chaminda@uom.lk Abstract The quarries which are abandoned ceasing operations without a proper closure plan cause negative impacts on the environment and also risk for the health and safety of society and the economy. This research focused on the environmental aspects that are affected by abandoned quarries and a sustainable methodology to design future land use. The objective of this research is to introduce a quarry rehabilitation method that is effective and has a positive impact on the environment, and applicable for abandoned quarries in Sri Lanka. In this respect, the district of Colombo has been chosen due to its importance in social and economic aspects. The research was conducted by identifying abandoned quarries through remote sensing and geographic information system technique (RS & GIS) analysis of satellite images of the concerned area. Prioritised two quarries among identified quarries for further analysis and suggested possible rehabilitation options. According to the land use analysis around the two quarries, the better rehabilitation option is to transform the lands into a vegetation area. Keywords: Colombo district, Land use, Quarry rehabilitation, RS & GIS, Sri Lanka 1. Introduction Mining has become one of the major aspects that contribute to the economy of developing countries. Regardless of the scale of the mine, it causes so many adverse effects to the environment as well as to society during its operations [1]. Some of these effects may impact for decades. It happens due to improper waste management and also due to negligence of rehabilitation measures [2]. Each and every mine has a lifetime for it. With time mines need to shut down their operations on a temporary or permanent basis due to the run out of ore supply, drop in commodity price or the uneconomical nature of operating the mine. After mining, people tend to abandon the mine without any precautions because there is a lack of clearly assigned responsibilities for mine rehabilitation, and it is uneconomical to rehabilitate since there are no fund allocations for it [3]. The main intention of mine rehabilitation is to reduce the long-term effects of environmental contaminations and also the social effects that are caused by abandoned mines [4]. Due to continuous mine waste