RT Journal Article
T1 Soil Acidification, Mineral Neoformation and Heavy Metal Contamination Driven by Weathering of Sulphide Wastes in a Ramsar Wetland
A1 Grantcharova, Mihaela M.
A1 Fernández Caliani, Juan Carlos
AB Past waste disposal practices have left large volumes of sulphidic material stockpiled in aRamsar wetland site on the Atlantic coast of southwestern Spain, leading to severe land degradation.With the aim of addressing this legacy issue, soil core samples were collected along two transectsextending from the abandoned stockpiles to the adjacent marshland and subjected to XRD, SEM-EDS,ICP-OES and ICP-MS analyses. Sulphide oxidation has been shown to be a major driver of acidgeneration and metal leaching into the environment. The marsh soil receiving acid discharges fromthe sulphide wastes contains elevated levels (in mg kg−1) of Pb (up to 9838), As (up to 1538), Zn(up to 1486), Cu (up to 705), Sb (up to 225) and Tl (up to 13), which are retained both in relativelyinsoluble secondary minerals (mainly metal sulphates and oxides) and in easily soluble hydratedsalts that serve as a transitory pool of acidity and available metals. By using a number of enrichmentcalculation methods that relate the metal concentrations in soil and their baseline concentrationsand regulatory thresholds, there is enough evidence to conclude that these pollutants may pose anunacceptable risk to human and ecological receptors
PB MDPI
SN 2076-3417 (electrónico)
YR 2021
FD 2021-12
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/21129
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/21129
LA eng
NO Grantcharova, M. M., & Fernández-Caliani, J. C. (2021). Soil Acidification, Mineral Neoformation and Heavy Metal Contamination Driven by Weathering of Sulphide Wastes in a Ramsar Wetland. In Applied Sciences (Vol. 12, Issue 1, p. 249). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12010249
NO This work has been partially supported by the Andalusian Regional Government throughthe Research Group on Geology and Environmental Geochemistry (RNM-347).: We thank Jesús de la Rosa (University of Huelva) for his collaboration duringfieldwork and for assistance with chemical analysis
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 31 may 2026