Mining can greatly affect water quality in nearby areas, especially when mines are abandoned and lead to contamination from tailings and drainage. This study examines the impact of the abandoned Ze & iuml;da lead mine on water sources in the Upper Moulouya region of northwestern Morocco. We aimed to evaluate water quality, understand geochemical processes, and determine the suitability of water for drinking and irrigation. In summer 2021, 21 water samples were collected from rivers, dams, groundwater, and quarry lakes. We analyzed 18 physicochemical and metallic parameters, finding significant variations in ion concentrations. The main ions were ranked as Na+ > Mg2+ > Ca2+ > K+ and HCO3- > Cl- > SO42- > NO3-. Metal concentrations followed the order Zn > Cu > Pb > As > Cd. The Drinking Water Quality Index (DWQI) showed that 95% of the samples were not suitable for drinking. Similarly, the Irrigation Water Quality Indexes (IWQIs) indicated that quarry lakes were unsuitable for irrigation, while groundwater met acceptable criteria. Over 70% of the samples showed no significant metal contamination based on the Heavy Metal Evaluation Index (HEI) and Heavy Metal Pollution Index (HPI). The data suggest that water-rock interactions are the main drivers of hydrochemical changes, with processes like calcite, dolomite, otavite, and cerussite precipitation, as well as the weathering of minerals like halite, starkeyite, and sylvite. To protect water quality and prevent environmental damage, ongoing monitoring and appropriate measures are recommended for the Ze & iuml;da mining area.

Copper, a malleable and ductile transition metal, possesses two stable isotopes. These copper isotopic composition data have recently found diverse applications in various fields and disciplines. In geology, copper isotopes serve as tracers that aid in investigating ore formation processes and the mechanisms of copper deposits Likewise, it has emerged as a valuable tracer in polluted environments. In plant biology, copper acts as an essential micronutrient crucial for photosynthesis, respiration, and growth. Copper isotopes contribute to understanding how plants uptake and dispense copper from the soil within their tissues. Similarly, in animals, copper serves as an essential trace element, playing a vital role in growth, white blood cell function, and enzyme activity. In humans, copper acts as an antioxidant, neutralising harmful free radicals within the body. It also helps in maintaining the nervous and immune system. Furthermore, copper isotopes find medical applications, particularly in cancer diagnostics, neurodegenerative diseases, and targeted radiotherapy. However, excessive copper can have detrimental effects in humans such as it can cause liver damage, nausea, and abdominal pain, whilst in plants it can affect the growth of plants, photosynthesis, and membrane permeability. This review emphasises the significance of copper and its isotopes in geology, the environment, and human health.

Sand aging, defined by time-dependent increases in stiffness and strength over periods ranging from days to months, poses significant challenges in geotechnical engineering and soil science. Despite its relevant implications, the mechanisms driving sand aging remain understood. This review systematically examines sand aging, emphasizing the classification of chemical and mechanical processes involved. Key advancements in chemical aging understanding, particularly the influence of surface chemistry and electrokinetic forces, are discussed. Additionally, the review underscores the critical role of micromechanical modeling, especially discrete element methods, in elucidating particle interactions and aging phenomena. The review also identifies essential directions for future research, notably incorporating particle shape and surface texture into aging models. Hence, this comprehensive resource aims to enhance the understanding of sand aging.

Insights into the impacts of freeze-thaw processes on soil microorganisms and their related functions in permafrost regions are crucial for assessing ecological consequences imposed by the shifts in freeze-thaw patterns. Through in-situ investigations on seasonal freeze-thaw processes in the active layer of permafrost in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, we found that microbial richness was higher and positively correlated with soil multifunctionality during the freeze-thaw stage (freezing and thawing periods) compared to the non-freeze-thaw stage (completely frozen and thawed periods). This relationship resulted from the higher microbial stability, which was highly consistent with the lower complexity, more keystone taxa, and greater robustness of networks. Although freeze-thaw strength exacerbated the greenhouse effect on climate, it was alleviated by the enhancement of diversity-soil multifunctionality relationship. These findings have substantial implications for exploring the responses of microbial-mediated soil multifunctionality and greenhouse effect in alpine permafrost to more drastic variations of freeze-thaw processes under future warming.

In high-level nuclear waste (HLW) repositories, concrete and compacted bentonite are designed to be employed as buffer materials, which may raise a problem of interactions between concrete and bentonite. These interactions would lead to mineralogy transformation and buffer performance decay of bentonite under the near field environment conditions in a repository. A small-scale experimental setup was established to simulate the concrete-bentonite-site water interaction system from a potential nuclear waste repository in China. Three types of mortars were prepared to correspond to the concrete at different degradation states. The results permit the determination of the following: (1) The macroproperties of Gaomiaozi (GMZ) bentonite (e.g. swelling pressure, permeability, the final dry density, and water content of reacted samples); (2) The composition evolution of fluids from the synthetic site water-concrete-bentonite interaction systems; (3) The sample characterization including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). Under the infiltration of the synthesis Beishan site water (BSW), the swelling pressure of bentonite decreases slowly with time after reaching its second swelling peak. The flux decreases with time during the infiltrations, and it tends to be stable after more than 120 d. Due to the cation exchange reactions in the BSW-concrete-bentonite systems, the divalent cations (Ca and Mg) were consumed, and the monovalent cations (Na and K) were released. The dissolution of minerals in the bentonite such as albite causes Si increasing in the pore water. It was concluded that the hydro-mechanical property degradation of bentonite takes place when it comes into contact with concrete mortar, even under low-pH groundwater conditions. The soil dispersion, the uneven water content, and the uneven dry density in bentonite samples may partly contribute to the swelling decay of bentonite. Therefore, the direct contact with concrete has an obvious effect on the performance of bentonite. (c) 2024 Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

In the summer of 2021, Greece experienced significant forest fires and mega-fires across multiple regions, leading to human casualties and damage to the natural environment, infrastructure, livestock, and agriculture. The current study aims to assess the ecosystem condition in terms of the natural regeneration and soil conditions of an area burnt by a forest fire (2021), specifically in the Ancient Olympia region situated in West Peloponnese (Ilia Prefecture), Greece. A standardized field sampling methodology was applied to record natural regeneration at chosen sites where a forest fire had also previously occurred (in 2007), resulting in the natural re-growth of the Pinus halepensis forest. Furthermore, an analysis was conducted on the geochemical, mineralogical, and sedimentological properties of soils obtained from this location. The findings of the research demonstrate the decline in the established natural regeneration of the Pinus halepensis forest and the overall tree layer. Species characteristic of post-fire ecological succession were observed in the shrub and herb layers, displaying varying coverage. The examination of soil mineralogy, sedimentology, and geochemistry indicated that the soil characteristics in the area are conducive to either natural or artificial regeneration. Ultimately, recommendations for landscape rehabilitation strategies are provided to inform decision-making processes, considering future climate conditions.

Deer management has become an integral part of ecosystem recovery efforts across the globe. Within Scotland, annual deer culls have been implemented to control deer browsing, with the carcasses most often removed from the landscape. Given that animal bodies concentrate large quantities of nutrients, this practice may deplete ecosystems of vital nutrients. We quantified the nitrogen, phosphorous and calcium losses from the removal of culled deer carcasses using nationwide statutory cull reports for four deer species in Scotland between 2010 and 2021. We estimate that annual losses from carcass removal over this period averaged 195,652 kg of nitrogen, 152,834 kg of phosphorus and 251,188 kg of calcium across Scotland. While both red and roe deer were culled at a much higher rate than the other two species red deer culls accounted for approximately 70% of the nutrients lost. Further, while large quantities of all three nutrients were removed from the landscape, calcium losses were particularly high. We then calculated nutrient losses within the three land classifications used in statutory cull reporting-agricultural areas, open range and woodlands-across Scotland's Deer Count Areas. Using data from the literature, we considered these losses in the context of other major environmental inputs and outputs within each land classification. Our results demonstrate that while open range lost more nutrients compared to the other two land classifications, culling resulted in high rates of phosphorus and calcium loss throughout all land classifications when compared to other environmental inputs. Practical implication. Our findings suggest that current practices of carcass removal are gradually stripping nutrients from the Scottish landscape, potentially undermining habitat recovery goals. While this study offers a preliminary, coarse scale summary of the issue, the way forward requires further study of local effects from carcass removal on nutrient pools and balancing deer management with habitat function through interwoven deer and nutrient management strategies. We quantified the nitrogen, phosphorous and calcium losses from the removal of culled deer carcasses using nationwide statutory cull reports for four deer species in Scotland between 2010 and 2021. Our findings suggest that current practices of carcass removal are gradually stripping nutrients from the landscape, potentially undermining habitat recovery goals.image

The conditions of the burial environment trigger microstructural modifications and physical-chemical changes in the bone, such as chemical dissolution, increase of crystallinity, chemical exchanges, collagen degradation and changes in porosity, hence to reproduce these patterns is a challenging task. This work presents a new method to accelerate the diagenetic processes in the laboratory. Artificial aging is obtained by immersion at 80 degrees C in enriched solutions derived from the leaching of gravesoils, maintaining the same pH, for 1 month, on modern bones collected from an autopsy. Two distinct solutions from two graves of the necropolis of Travo (IT) (7th-8th century AD) were adopted. The induced damage patterns, on the bone microstructure and the organo-mineral fraction, have been compared with those observed on buried skeletal elements from the same graves, by providing a multi-analytical approach (BSE-SEM, EMPA, FT-IR, MP-AES). Bioapatite parameters, such as crystallinity index and Ca/P molar ratio, evolved similarly and, in some cases, reached the same values of buried bones. Conversely, in the absence of microbial activity, the organic fraction better survived the artificial aging. For the same reason, the porosity due to bioerosion was absent in the artificially aged samples, whereas the biological pores and the post-mortem fractures exhibited the same histomorphology. It is believed that the opportunity of reproducing the diagenetic changes by replicating the chemical environment of the burial site at the laboratory scale is of great interest to forensic science and archaeology (e.g., to reconstruct the burial environment).

In the context of global warming, increasingly widespread and frequent freezing and thawing cycles (FTCs) will have profound effects on the biogeochemical cycling of soil carbon and nitrogen. FTCs can increase soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing the stability of soil aggregates, promoting the release of dissolved organic carbon, decreasing the number of microorganisms, inducing cell rupture, and releasing carbon and nitrogen nutrients for use by surviving microorganisms. However, the similarity and disparity of the mechanisms potentially contributing to changes in GHGs have not been systematically evaluated. The present study consolidates the most recent findings on the dynamics of soil carbon and nitrogen, as well as GHGs, in relation to FTCs. Additionally, it analyzes the impact of FTCs on soil GHGs in a systematic manner. In this study, particular emphasis is given to the following: (i) the reaction mechanism involved; (ii) variations in soil composition in different types of land (e.g., forest, peatland, farmland, and grassland); (iii) changes in soil structure in response to cycles of freezing temperatures; (iv) alterations in microbial biomass and community structure that may provide further insight into the fluctuations in GHGs after FTCs. The challenges identified included the extension of laboratory-scale research to ecosystem scales, the performance of in-depth investigation of the coupled effects of carbon, nitrogen, and water in the freeze-thaw process, and analysis of the effects of FTCs through the use of integrated research tools. The results of this study can provide a valuable point of reference for future experimental designs and scientific investigations and can also assist in the analysis of the attributes of GHG emissions from soil and the ecological consequences of the factors that influence these emissions in the context of global permafrost warming.

Glacial sediments as an important end member of the global dust system, could indicate changes in global climate, aerosols sources, ocean elements, and productivity. With global warming, ice caps shrinking and glaciers retreat at high latitudes have attracted concern. To understand the response of glacier to environment and climate in modern high latitude ice-marginal environments, this paper investigated glacial sediments in the Ny-angstrom lesund region of the Arctic and clarified the response of polar environmental to global changes through geochemical characteristics of glacial sediments. The results showed that: 1) main factors affecting the elements distribution of the Ny-angstrom lesund glacial sediments were thought as soil formation, bedrock and weathering, and biological activity; 2) variations of SiO2/Al2O3 and SiO2/Al2O3 + Fe2O3, indicating low weathering of the soil. The ratio of Na2O/K2O indicating a weak chemical weathering, was negatively correlated to the CIA. With the average CIA of Ny-angstrom lesund glacial sediments for main minerals of quartz, feldspar, and muscovite as well as dolomite and calcite 50.13, which implied glacial sediments at the early stage of chemical weathering and depletion of Ca and Na; 3) the separating effect of stones and soils by stone circle formation due to thermal conductivity and frost heave makes sediments in stone circle have lower chemical weathering with only two main minerals, albite and quartz; 4) changes of carbonate content in sediments with glacier front retreating in different period implied that weathering rate of calcite averagely reached an estimate of 0.0792% wt/year in glacier A. The succession of vegetation made biological weathering become an important driving force for carbonate leaching from glacial sediments. These results and data provide scientifically significant archive for future global change studies.