Acid mine drainage (AMD) is among the major environmental concerns related to mining activity and often causes complete degradation of affected ecosystems during and/or after closure [...]

Investigations into the cause and control of the production of sulfuric acid in effluents of coal mines, and the effects of such effluents upon streams were begun in 1946.1 Working and abandoned mines of Western Pennsylvania alone contribute an estimated million tons of sulfuric acid per year to the drainage area of the Ohio River. A field survey of mine drainage and receiving streams was inaug...

In the environment, two main sources of heavy metals are natural backgrounds derived from parent rocks and anthropogenic contamination including mineral industrial wastes, tailing damps of sulfide mines, agrochemicals, and other outputs of industrial activities and factories. In this work, the physico-chemical aspects of the magnetic Nano- mineral surfaces are studied in contrast to acid mine d...

The underground uranium mine Königstein (Saxony, Germany), currently in the process of remediation, represents an underground acid mine drainage (AMD) environment, that is, low pH conditions and high concentrations of heavy metals including uranium, in which eye-catching biofilm formations were observed. During active uranium mining from 1984 to 1990, technical leaching with sulphuric acid was ...

The geochemical behavior of zinc, lead and copper from sulfidic tailings in a mine site with potential to generate acidic drainage (pyrite (55%) and sphalerite (2%)) is reported in this paper. The mining area is divided in two zones, considering the topographic location of sampling points with respect to the tailings pile: (a) outer zone, out of the probable influence of acid mine drainage (AMD...

A novel type of macroscopic microbial community consisting of large dendritic filaments (up to 1.5 m) in a pH 2.0 dam of the River Tinto (South-western Spain) is described. The combined use of 16S rRNA-gene surveys and fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) suggested that gamma-proteobacteria and a relative large diversity of alpha-proteobacteria dominated these structures. beta-Proteobacteri...

Fuzzy logic was applied to model acid mine drainage (AMD) and to obtain a classification index of the environmental impact in a contaminated riverine system. The data set used to develop this fuzzy model (a fuzzy classifier) concerns to an abandoned mine in Northern Portugal – Valdarcas mining site. Here, distinctive drainage environments (spatial patterns) can be observed based on the acid min...