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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.
Acknowledgements
The assistance of the USA Fulbright Program grant, the Hungarian-American Enterprise and Scholarship Fund (HAESF) grant, The Eotvos Grant of the Hungarian Scholarship Board, the Bolyai Janos Research Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Science and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism–Hungarian Science Fund are gratefully acknowledged. We thank associate professor Ulf Qvarfort of the Uppsala University for providing research facilities and Emőke Jocháné Edelényi, György Tóth and László Kuti of the Geological Institute of Hungary for making possible the preparation of this paper. Renata Verga helped with the graphical work. Comments of the two anonymous reviewers helped to improve the paper.