doi: 10.18178/ijesd.2017.8.9.1031
Impact of an Abandoned Mine on Surrounding Soils, Surface Water and Stream Sediment: Case of SOMIAF Gold Mine, Côte d’Ivoire
K. A. F. Yao1
,
D. Salze2 ,
L-F. Miguel2 ,
T. Lasm3 ,
olivier.belcourt @mines-ales.fr2
- 1the Industrial and Environmental Engineering, École
- 2the Industrial and
- 3the Earth Sciences and Mineral Resources Department
Abstract
The old gold mine of Somiaf in Afema district(Southern of Côte d’Ivoire) ceased operating in 1998 withoutreal site rehabilitation. In 2016, geochemical analyses of thesoils, stream sediments and Hydrochemical characterization ofwaters of the surrounding area were carried out to assess theenvironmental impact of this mining site.<br>The chemical analyses of surface water revealed that almostall the studied water are of poor quality based on the waterquality index (WQI). On soils and stream sediments samples thechemical analyses showed Cd, Pb and As pollution. While soilcontamination by Pb may be due to mining activity as shown inthe water case, Cd and As seems to be coming from agriculturalactivities due to the widespread contamination. This studyallowed us to get an overall view of the state of the environmentafter the end of the mining activity with the focus on the state ofthe quality of water consumed by the populations. A moredetailed study must be carried out in order to accuratelycharacterize the origin of the metal pollution in the waters.
Keywords
- Mining
- WQI
- metal contamination
- Côte d’Ivoire
How to Cite
K. A. F. Yao, D. Salze, L-F. Miguel, T. Lasm, and olivier.belcourt @mines-ales.fr, "Impact of an Abandoned Mine on Surrounding Soils, Surface Water and Stream Sediment: Case of SOMIAF Gold Mine, Côte d’Ivoire," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, vol. 8, no. 9, pp. 642-646, 2017. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijesd.2017.8.9.1031
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2017 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).