Ecosystems health and geochemistry: concepts and methods applied to abandoned mine sites

Abstract

This study is based on the premise that the good health of an ecosystem is essential for its sustainable development, introducing a new terminology for understanding pollution. Thus, the health of ecosystems is defined as an emerging scíence, or systemic approach, to prevent, diagnose and predict management features and establish relationships between the health of ecosystems and humans. It is within this framework that our experimental study was conducted on three sites situated in abandoned mines in the central Iberian Península. The ecosystems present are mainly thosé of grazing pastures although cereals are also culíivated. In each of these settings, we find that soils contain more than one heavy metal in their top layers, particularly Cu, Zn, Pb and Cd. This pollution is punctaíe and affects both the plant populations of the sites and their consumers, with the possible transfer of pollutants to the river or groundwater systems, depending on the type of soil and geomorphological factors. We describe the protocol used to evalúate the health status of these ecosystems in terms of effects involving the geochemistry of the heavy metáis they contain.