Sediment Influenced by Acid Mine Drainage in the Smolnik Creek – Qualitative and Quantitative Characterization

Abstract

Water and sediment quality monitoring has one of the highest priorities in environmental protection policy. Heavy metals entering into the river can be from natural or anthropogenic sources. Main anthropogenic sources of heavy metal contamination are mining, disposal of untreated and partially treated effluents contain toxic metals, as well as metal chelates from different industries. In Slovak Republic there are some localities with existing acid mine drainage (AMD) generation conditions. The most critical values were observed in the abandoned deposit Smolnik. Waters from the earth surface penetrated the mine and they are enriched with metals and their pH values decreased. The paper presents comparison of results of quantitative XRF analysis of sediments from the Smolnik creek sampled in uncontaminated part of creek and in the part influenced by AMD. The characterisation of sediments by statistical analysis are presented