A Thematic Collection of Papers on Geochemical Processes Related to Mined, Milled, or Natural Metal Deposits in a Rapidly Changing Global Environment - 2025

Geochemistry & Hydrochemistry

Parviainen and 5 additional Guest Editors reported than alterations to the rate or intensity of natural weathering of metal ore deposits has the potential to negatively affect Earth's surface environments. Changing chemical conditions (e.g. pH, temperature, redox potential) surrounding mine waste storage facilities may induce re-mobilisation of metal(loid)s in environmental systems.

                                                        Pit lake at an abandoned, legacy Sb-mine in NE Tasmania, Australia' courtesy
                                                        of Clare Miller.

Increased release and discharge of metal(loid)s to soils, surface and/or groundwater, and uptake by biota can pose a threat to living organisms including humans. Differentiating between the cumulative effects of natural geochemical cycling, resource development, and climate change in environmental systems is challenging. Novel challenges arise where:

i) the geochemical fingerprint of potentially well understood, pointed anthropogenic metal(loid) sources such as those from mining activities are admixed with more diffuse modern origins (e.g. burning of various fossil fuels, fertilizer industry), or where

ii) climate change and all its local and over-regional effects complicates our understanding of the anthropogenic signal dispersal and deposition.

This thematic collection aims to identify and address current knowledge gaps related to the compounding influence of environmental management, anthropogenic development, and climate change on the reactivity, mobility, fate, transport, and toxicity of metal(loid)s from mineralized sites.

With the overarching aim to trace and quantify changes to the present-day cycles of anthropogenic metal(loid)s from source to larger sinks, the collection includes contributions that suggest new and combined strategies (including e.g. isotope tracers) to fingerprint and quantify sources of anthropogenic metal(loid) release to the atmospheric, aquatic and terrestrial environment, from the micro-scale to the global scale, using a variety of techniques and approaches.

This thematic collection comprises a selection of research originally presented at the Goldschmidt Conference, Hawai'i, 10–16 July 2022.