Upper Arkansas Toxic-Substances Hydrology
Science Center Objects
Since 1986, the USGS Hard-Rock Mining Toxic-Substances Hydrology Project has focused on metal transport in streams affected by mining.
The approach is to study chemical processes within a hydrologic context, using a two-step approach:
- First, the USGS used instream experimentation to provide data about the processes affecting metals.
- Second, the USGS used the resulting data sets to develop and apply solute transport models to help quantify rates and processes.
Tracer-injection studies in St. Kevin Gulch, near Leadville, Colorado, helped the USGS design methods to characterize loading from mining activities on a watershed scale. Tracer-injection studies were done in 1995, in support of the planning needs of ederal Land Management Agencies, and as part of the USGS Abandoned Mine Land Initiative.
OBJECTIVES:
- To characterize the instream chemical processes that control the transport and transformation of metals downstream from mine drainage.
- To use tracer-injection methods to evaluate remediation efforts in selected basins.
- To quantify the time and length scales of chemical and hydrologic processes that affect the metals through development of solute-transport models.
- To characterize the chemistry of colloids, sediment, and bed sediments that are active in controlling the dissolved concentrations of metals.
Additional information and project results are available at: