Metals in streams come from acid mine drainage, like that from the Yankee Mine seen in the picture.

Utah PROJECTS

• Major Projects (view all)
  • Great Basin Ground Water Availability
  • Stream Stats
  • Great Salt Lake Nutrient Cycling
  • Salinity Load Assessment

• NAWQA Program
  • Great Salt Lake Basins

ABOUT THE UTAH WSC

• • Office information
    • Locations
    • Employee directory
    • Office organization
    • What we do
  • Newsroom
  • Outreach/Education
  • Information requests

• • USGS Phonebook
  • Employment

USGS IN YOUR STATE

USGS Water Science Centers are located in each state.

Toxic Substances Hydrology Program - Metals and Hard-Rock Mining

Project Number: 97169GZ
Project Chief: Briant Kimball , USGS Salt Lake City, Utah
Cooperator:
Period of Project: February 1986 to continuous

Streams affected by acid, metal-rich drainage
usually have many sources of metals.
This large iron bog contributes a substantial
metal load to Red Mountain Creek, Colorado.

PROBLEM

Thousands of historical hard-rock mines exist across the Western United States. Mine dumps, tailing piles, and drainage from flood plains that contain mine wastes often contaminate the surrounding catchment and its ecosystems. Weathering of exposed unmined mineral deposits also results in acid drainage and metal-rich waters. The Toxic Substances Hydrology (TOXICS) Program brings together an interdisciplinary team of scientists to investigate biogeochemical and hydrologic processes that affect the migration of contamination from mined and un-mined sources within a catchment and its effects on the associated ecosystems. This research must be interdisciplinary because the effects on organisms, populations, and communities are determined by the complex interaction of hydrologic, geologic, chemical, and biological processes that control the source, transport, and fate of hard-rock mining (HRM) contaminants. These processes span a range of spatial and temporal scales from the overall catchment scale, to the stream reach scale, to the interfacial scale, and temporal scales ranging from seconds to months and years.

OBJECTIVES

For the second year of our current work plan, the principal objectives continue to be:
• Characterize the hydrologic and biogeochemical processes and properties that affect the dispersal of metals in the environment and that influence metal transport and attenuation.
• Describe the pathways of metal contaminants through aqueous solution and diet to organisms of impacted ecosystems.

These generalized objectives lead to the goals of applying HRM studies to assist land-management decisions in specific ways:

1. Reconstructing pre-mining conditions.
2. Predicting consequences of hydrologic modifications.
3. Predicting in-stream effects for mine remediation decisions.
4. Quantifying changes in biogeochemical systems in response to remediation.

A field laboratory provides a clean location to process and filter samples during a large synoptic sampling experiment.

RELEVANCE AND BENEFITS

Historical mining has left complex problems in catchments throughout the world. Land managers and regulators are faced with making cost-effective plans for remediation that provide the most benefit to streams. Many remediation plans for catchments throughout the western United States and in Europe have been facilitated by field-scale experiments that quantify mass-loading of metals. Spatially detailed mass-loading profiles indicate the principal sources, seasonal changes, and biogeochemical processes that affect metals in streams. Current research is toward improving the ability to simulate remediation options through reactive solute-transport modeling and to estimate pre-mining concentrations of metals in streams.

APPROACH

Our approach is to study chemical processes within an hydrologic context, using a two-step approach. First, we have employed in-stream experimentation to provide data about the processes affecting metals. The in-stream experiments generally have combined tracer-injection to quantify the hydrologic context, and synoptic sampling to provide detailed spatial information on inflows and in-stream chemical changes that result for the influence of inflows. Second, we have used reactive-transport modeling to test our understanding of processes. Modeling also has provided a useful tool to help land-management agencies evaluation options for remediation of mine drainage.

PRODUCTS

  2008 Publications

• Borrok, D.M., Nimick, D.A., Wanty, R.B., and Ridley, W.I., 2008, Isotopic variation of dissolved copper and zinc in stream waters affected by historical mining: Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta, v. 72, p. 329-344.
• Caruso, B.S., Cox, T.J., Runkel, R.L., Velleux, M.L., Bencala, K.E., Nordstrom, D.K., Julien, P.Y., Butler, B.A., Alpers, C.N., Marion, A., and Smith, K.S., 2008, Metals fate and transport modelling in streams and watersheds: state of the science and USEPA workshop review: Hydrological Processes, v. 22, p. 4011-4021.
• Chapin, T.P., Nimick, D.A., Gammons, C.H., and Wanty, R.B., 2007, Diel cycling of metals in a stream impacted by acid rock drainage; results from a new in-situ analyzer and water sampler: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, v. 133, p. 161-167.
• Gammons, C.H., Milodragovich, Lica, and Belanger-Woods, Jodi, 2007, Influence of diurnal cycles on metal concentrations and loads in streams draining abandoned mine lands: an example from High Ore Creek, Montana: Environmental Geology, v. 53, p. 611-622.
• Gammons, C.H., Nimick, D.A., Parker, S.R., Snyder, D.M., McCleskey, R.B., Amils, R., and Poulson, S.R., 2008, Photoreduction fuels biogeochemical cycling of iron in Spain’s acid rivers: Chemical Geology, v. 252, p. 202-213.
• Gooseff, M.N., Bencala, K.E., and Wondzell, S.M., 2008, Solute transport along stream and river networks, in Rice, S.P., Roy, A.G., and Rhoads, B.L., eds., River Confluences, Tributaries and the Fluvial Network: Chicester, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chap. 18, p. 395-417.
• Kimball, B.A., Bianchi, F., Walton-Day, K., Runkel, R.L., Nannucci, M., and Salvadori, A., 2007, Quantification of changes in metal loading from storm runoff, Merse River (Tuscany, Italy): Mine Water and Environment, v. 26, no. 4, p. 209-216.
• Kimball, B.A., ., Runkel, R.L.and Walton-Day, K, 2007, Principal Locations of Metal Loading from Flood-Plain Tailings, Lower Silver Creek, Utah, April 2004: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2007-5248, 33 p.
• Kimball, B.A., Walton-Day, K., and Runkel, R.L., 2007, Quantification of metal loading by tracer injection and synoptic sampling, 1996-2000, in Church, S. E., von Guerard, P. B., and Finger, S. E., eds., Integrated investigations of environmental effects of historical mining in the Animas River watershed, San Juan County, Colorado (1651 ed.), U.S. Geological Survey, p. 417-495.
• Kimball, Briant A., Runkel, Robert L., and Walton-Day, Kathrine, 2008, Principal Locations of Major-Ion, Trace-Element, Nitrate, and Escherichia coli Loading to Emigration Creek, Salt Lake County, Utah, October 2005: U. S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2008-5043, 33 p.
• Konieczki, A.D. , Brown, J.G., and Parker, J.T.C. , 2008 Hydrologic Data from the Study of Acidic Contamination in the Miami Wash—Pinal Creek Area, Arizona, Water Years 1997–2004. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2008–1273.
• Nimick, D.A., Harper, D.D., Farag, A.M., Cleasby, T.E., MacConnell, Elizabeth, and Skaar, Don, 2007, Influence of in-stream diel cycles of dissolved trace metals on acute toxicity to age-1 cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi): Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, v. 26, no. 12, p. 2667-2678.
• Nordstrom, D. Kirk, Wright, Winfield G., Mast, M. Alisa, Bove, Dana J., and Rye, Robert O., 2007, Aqueous-Sulfate Stable Isotopes—A Study of Mining-Affected and Undisturbed Acidic Drainage, in Church, S. E., von Guerard, P. B., and Finger, S. E., eds., Integrated investigations of environmental effects of historical mining in the Animas River watershed, San Juan County, Colorado (1651 ed.), U.S. Geological Survey, p. 417-495.
• Verplanck, P.L., Manning, A.H., Kimball, B.A., McCleskey, R.B., Runkel, R.L., Caine, J.S., Adams, Monique, Gemery-Hill, P.A., and Fey, D.L., 2008, Ground- and surface-water chemistry of Handcart Gulch, Park County, Colorado, 2003-2006: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2007-1020, 31 p.
• Walton-Day, K., Paschke, S.S., Runkel, R.L., and Kimball, B.A., 2007, Using the OTIS solute transport model to evaluate remediation scenarios in Cement Creek and the upper Animas River, in Church, S. E., von Guerard, P. B., and Finger, S. E., eds., Integrated investigations of environmental effects of historical mining in the Animas River watershed, San Juan County, Colorado (1651 ed.), U.S. Geological Survey, p. 973-1028.
• Wright, Winfield G., Kimball, Briant A., and Runkel, Robert L., 2007 Effects of the May Day Mine Site on Stream-Water Quality in the Cement Creek Basin, August 2000, in Church, S. E., von Guerard, P. B., and Finger, S. E., eds., Integrated investigations of environmental effects of historical mining in the Animas River watershed, San Juan County, Colorado (1651 ed.), U.S. Geological Survey, p. 417-495.

A complete bibliography for the project can be found at: http://toxics.usgs.gov/bib/bib-Mining.html