Element Accumulation Patterns of Native Plant Species under the Natural Geochemical Stress

Abstract

A biogeochemical study of more than 20,000 soil and plant samples from the North Caucasus, Dzungarian Alatau, Kazakh Uplands, and Karatau Mountains revealed features of the chemical element uptake by the local flora. Adaptation of ore prospecting techniques alongside environmental approaches allowed the detection of geochemical changes in ecosystems, and the lessons learned can be embraced for soil phytoremediation. The data on the influence of phytogeochemical stress on the accumulation of more than 20 chemical elements by plants are considered in geochemical provinces, secondary fields of deposits, halos surrounding ore and nonmetallic deposits, zones of regional faults and schist formation, and over lithological contact lines of chemically contrasting rocks overlain by 5–20 m thick soils and unconsolidated cover. We have corroborated the postulate that the element accumulation patterns of native plants under the natural geochemical stress depend not only on the element content in soils and the characteristics of a particular species but also on the values of ionic radii and valences; with an increase in the energy coefficients of a chemical element, its plant accumulation decreases sharply. The contribution of internal factors to element uptake from solutions gives the way to soil phytoremediation over vast contaminated areas. The use of hyperaccumulating species for mining site soil treatment depends on several external factors that can strengthen or weaken the stressful situation, viz., the amount of bedrock exposure and thickness of unconsolidated rocks over ores, the chemical composition of ores and primary halos in ore-containing strata, the landscape and geochemical features of sites, and chemical element migration patterns in the supergene zone.

Geochemistry of Terrestrial Plants in the Central African Copperbelt: Implications for Sediment Hosted Copper-Cobalt Exploration

“…Soils are sampled using the traditional soil geochemical sampling targeting the B-horizon [1]. In addition, Alekseenko et al [113] suggest sampling soils dislodged from plant roots to determine the potential metal enrichment relative to the background concentrations in the soil.…”

Dynamic response of multi-scale geophysical systems: waves and practical applications

“…The result representing a vertical section uses a semitone form of visualization of scalar field Ω, adequately displaying both the surfaces of the layers of stratification and discontinuities associated with tectonic contacts. The transition from one structural-material complex to another is often associated with a jump in the average wavelength of the structural surface [45][46][47] (figure 3).…”

“…The methods of analysis in geophysics are closely connected to the vital task of inspection of underground pipelines and tunnels [14,39,[46][47][48]. Also, for some types of rocks and minerals that may be located at great depth, where the seismic responses do not represent explicitly the physical objects, for additional verification the methods of non-destructive evaluation [48] may be effective anomalies measured at a distance from the damaged section of the structure with the disturbed section shows that the magnetometer used in the procedure registers the disturbances, but not directly from the defective pipeline itself.…”

“…The methods of analysis in geophysics are closely connected to the vital task of inspection of underground pipelines and tunnels [14,39,46–48]. Also, for some types of rocks and minerals that may be located at great depth, where the seismic responses do not represent explicitly the physical objects, for additional verification the methods of non-destructive evaluation [48] may be effective for interpreting anomalous magnetic field curves.…”

Morphometric parameters of sulphide ores as a basis for selective ore dressing

“…In the modern world, the proportion of finely crushed, resistant raw materials is increasing, which requires the development of new approaches and technologies in the process of ore dressing [1,2]. Disintegration processes applied at the initial stage of beneficiation allow extraction of the valuable components in a more economical and environmentally friendly way and thus increase the profitability of ores and deposits [3][4][5]. The complexity of finely disseminated sulphide ores processing is caused by the difficulty of opening of clusters of valuable components at disintegration for their extraction in the conditioned quality commercial products [6,7].…”