Geochemical Landscape Analysis: Development and Application to the Risk Assessment of Acid Mine Drainage. A Case Study in Central Sweden

Abstract

Acid mine drainage containing toxic contaminants is a major cause of landscape degradation at numerous historic mine sites in Europe. Risk assessment of acid mine drainage and related polluted lands requires an approach that is able to study the complexity of pollution emissions and impacted landscapes. The objective of this paper is to link geochemical contaminant fate modelling and landscape analysis for the risk assessment of acid mine drainage along the source-pathway-receptor chain. A simple geochemical landscape analysis tool is developed using landscape ecology spatial analysis and geochemical modelling methods. A case study is presented for the analysis of geochemical landscapes in central Sweden. Results show that the method can be used efficiently for the risk assessment of toxic mine contaminants in the complex wetland landscape in the study area.

The risk of collapse in abandoned mine sites: the issue of data uncertainty

“…The risk associated with abandoned mines requires careful consideration because these dismissed mines can generate several forms of damage to the surrounding environment: collapse of large ar-eas, subsidence, pollution, etc. As reported by several authors [1][2][3][4][5], abandoned mines have serious implications for the land: a number of authors have studied the impact of mines on surface stability [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], while others have focused on pollution of the environment [18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

Environmental modelling and spatial landscape analysis for the contamination risk assessment of sensitive areas

“…Those elementary geochemical units of landscape that are geochemically related by transport processes (areas at recharge and discharge regions of the same groundwater system, for example) form a geochemical units of landscape (Fig.3). By the superimposition of homogeneous elementary geochemical units and transport models, geochemical barriers and corridors can be easily predicted and described, for example, fundamental in mine contamination assessment (Jordan and Szucs 2011) (Fig.3). On this basis, LG studies geochemically 'sub-ordinate' landscape units as well where the geochemistry of the area such as a stream segment is influenced by other geochemically homogenous units of landscape such as an area with mineralisation or a mine upslope.…”

“…Landscape geochemistry focus is on mainly the material flow analysis and abiotic processes (Fortescue 1992). The two essential steps are (1) the identification of the geochemical character of an area (such as soil and groundwater pH, Eh and adsorption properties), and (2) the analysis of the spatial topological relations of these geochemically homogeneous areas (geochemical landscape units) by geochemical transport and reaction processes (Jordan and Szucs 2011;Kauppila et al 2011;Goldhamber et al 2009). The geochemical character of an area is defined by the physico-chemical properties of landscape components (such as barerock, soil, ground and surface water, biosphere and atmosphere) and their spatial relationship relative to matter transport processes.…”