Question

Nevada has a tremendous number of both active and abandoned mines, mine tailings, and unmined mineralized areas. Suppose that you worked for a government agency that wanted to plan a program of water sampling to determine the locations of the worst surface water contamination in the State in order to plan targeted remediation. Your agency doesn’t have a budget big enough to send an army of water samplers out to systematically sample every stream in the State. Your job is to carry out a GIS analysis that will determine proximity of known mines and mine-related pollution sources to streams and rivers to determine the initial target list for water sampling.

Answer 1

Answer:

Reconnaissance field studies were made at 50 historical mining districts in northern Nevada to determine the actual or potential contamination of surface or ground water by mine drainage water, mine-waste dumps, and mill tailings. The main focus of this report is on mining areas in the central Humboldt River Basin, from approximately Elko to Winnemucca, with coverage of adjacent or analogous mining areas. More than 650 new chemical analyses of mine water, mine waste and tailings, and leachates of those materials are described and interpreted to provide Federal land-management agencies and the public with concepts regarding sources of mining-related contamination and the extent of contamination.