Geostatistical methods applied to contaminated land by abandoned metal mining

摘要

Mining operations related to the production, transportation, processing and abandoned mine workings undoubtedly cause varying degree of environmental damages in mining areas. The great antiquity and global distribution of the metal mining industry has resulted in significant areas of land being affected by spillage and disposal waste material. Geostatistical methods are useful for site assessment, characterisation and monitoring situations where data are collected on a spatial network of sampling locations, and are particularly suited to cases where contour maps of contaminant concentration or other variables are desired. This paper considers variogram and kriging methods of geostatistics used for the assessment of sampling strategy and data interpretation for potentially contaminated land. Kriging of the data was conducted to smooth out the contours and the maps were plotted. The maps indicated the specific areas of contamination. A case study is used to illustrate the application of technique to an abandoned metal mining site in the UK.