MARBLE WASTE AND PIG SLURRY INCREMENT SOIL QUALITY AND REDUCE METAL AVAILABILITY IN A TAILING POND

Tailing ponds pose environmental hazards, such as toxic metals reaching water sources through wind and water erosion and leaching. These abandoned mine sites contain materials with high contents of Fe- oxyhydroxides, sulfides, and heavy metals. As a consequence, soils have null vegetation and low so...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Raúl Zornoza, Ángel Faz, Silvia Martínez-Martínez, José Alberto Acosta, María Dolores Gómez-López, Silvia Mónica Avilés-Marín
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:México
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Baja California
Repositorio:Redalyc-UABC
OAI Identifier:oai:redalyc.org:57328308003
Acceso en línea:https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=57328308003
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ciencias de la Tierra
amendments
heavy metals
tailing pond
Contamination
Descripción
Sumario:Tailing ponds pose environmental hazards, such as toxic metals reaching water sources through wind and water erosion and leaching. These abandoned mine sites contain materials with high contents of Fe- oxyhydroxides, sulfides, and heavy metals. As a consequence, soils have null vegetation and low soil organic matter. In this study, various physicochemical properties, together with microbial biomass carbon and available metals, were measured before and six months after application of marble waste (6.7 kg m-2), raw pig slurry (4.3 L m-2), and solid phase pig slurry (7 kg m-2) as reclamation strategy in a tailing pond in southeastern Spain, to reduce hazards for the environment and human health. Results showed that aggregate stability, pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, cation exchange capacity, available phosphorus, exchangeable potassium and microbial biomass carbon increased with the application of the amendments, while available metals and metalloid (As, Cd, Pb and Zn) drastically decreased (90-99%). This study confirms the high effectiveness of initial applications of marble wastes together with pig slurry to initialize the recovery of ecosystems in bare mine soils under Mediterranean semiarid conditions.