Geochemical Characteristics and Environmental Risks of Soils Around Coal Mining Areas
A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Mineralogy and Biogeochemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 2831
Special Issue Editors
Interests: environmental geochemistry; mine environmental engineering; ecological geology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Though coal is a natural resource of paramount importance, used in a wide array of activities in daily human life, its extraction processes often result in the introduction of multiple pollutants into surrounding soils. Mining areas typically host a complex interplay of human activities, including mining, smelting, and agriculture, which lead to an equally intricate mechanism of pollution. Pollutants released as a result of mining activities, such as heavy metals, enter soil, and undergo various biogeochemical processes such as adsorption, chelation, co-precipitation, and bioaccumulation. These natural processes can alter the natural concentration of soil, affect its quality, and potentially have an adverse impact on human health as well.
Since the migration and transformation of pollutants in the soil are influenced by soil physicochemical properties and biological interactions, it is rather important to adequately characterize these underlying mechanisms for effective application and enhancement of remediation methods. At present, data on the geochemical characteristics of pollutants in coal mining area soils is highly limited due to lack of effective analysis tools. Although some attention has been paid to heavy metal pollution in coal mining areas, there remains a deficiency in systematic research for quantitatively identifying pollution sources and migration transformation mechanisms, clarifying contamination pathways, and conducting environmental risk assessments.
Therefore, this Special Issue invites submissions of research manuscripts that underscore the geochemical characteristics and environmental risks of various pollutants in the soils surrounding coal mining area, thus contributing and expanding the existing literature on this domain.
Prof. Dr. Liugen Zheng
Dr. Jiamei Zhang
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- soil geochemistry in coal mining area
- element transportation and transformation
- source identification
- environmental risk assessment
- future development
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