Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2019 number 3

Using on ten-year-long monitoring observations of the status of natural environments across the territory of development of the copper-nickel deposit in the settings of Kamchatka, we examine the characteristics of ecological and geochemical changes in surface waters, soils, plants and bottom sediments, reflecting the main technological stages of deposit development. The assessment of the status of natural environments was made every year for the same sampling locations, both in the influence zone of mine facilities and at a distance from them, to determine seasonal variations in the parameters of the local geochemical background. Soils were assessed by selecting them from the upper, most polluted, organogenic horizon. Vegetation monitoring was carried out on sphagnum mosses for which background studies revealed the highest biological absorption coefficients. At natural water sampling locations, the youngest and fine-grained (sandy-clay fraction less than 1 mm) bottom sediments were collected, characterizing recent changes in the catchment areas in the influence zone of influence of the enterprise. It is shown that the geochemical transformation of soils, plants, and bottom sediments at the time of development of the copper-nickel deposit is more complex in character than the dynamics of chemical changes in the surface waters of the territory which is determined by the development stages of production and by the structural characteristics of the ore body. Adjustments to the ecological and geochemical changes in soils and plants are made by the processes of release of ore elements from secondary superimposed haloes of dispersion triggered by mass explosions in open pit mining, and by the polybarrier mechanism of concentration of chemical elements inherent in mosses. The specific properties of chemical elements that manifest themselves in the interaction of surface waters with organic matter are responsible for the time difference in their accumulation in marshy soils and bottom sediments of streams.