Subject: Re: Biogeology [Was: Plants and Pb]

From: [email-masked] (Brian Curtiss)
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 22:20:26 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>,
[email-masked] (Ian B Staples) wrote:

> "Gordon A. Fox" <[email-masked]> writes:
> >[email-masked] (Joel Kroin ) wrote:
> >>Many years ago some researchers found some plants which have an
> >>affinity to absorb gold from soil over gold mine trailings. The process
> >>was not economically feasible. I doubt if further work was done.
> 
> >I don't know about anyone being foolish enough to try to make money this 
> >way, but I do know that (1) a lot of mineral exploration has been done 
> >based on plants w/ known tolerances for particular minerals, and that did 
> >pay off, at least some of the time, and (2) there's now a growing body of 
> >experience in which plants are used for remediating contaminated soils. 
> >There are obviously limitations and problems, but I don't think the idea 
> >is one that should be scoffed at.
> 
> A couple of (rather old) references for those interested in this topic:
> 
> BROOKS, R.R. (1968).  Biogeochemical prospecting in New Zealand.
>         _NZ Sci. Review_ v.26(1): 9-12
> 
> ANTONOVICS, J., BRADSHAW, A.D., and TURNER, R.G. (1971). Heavy metal
>         tolerance in plants.  _Advances in Ecological Research_ v.7: 1-85.
> 
> The former refers, for example, to "... species such as _Viola calamina_,
> which grow only over zinc deposits in Western and Central Europe."
> 
several other references on this topic:

Levinson, A.A. (1974) Introduction to Exploration Geochemistry. Applied
Publishing Ltd., Wilmette, Illinois, U.S.A.

    --- this book has a section on the use of vegetation surveys (that is
where veg. samples are analyzed for their chemical content).  The idea is
that some plants concentrate particular elements above what would be found
in the soil.  Also, a tree's root system "samples" to a greater depth than
could be done by digging a soil pit.

A book by Brooks that might be a bit easier to find than the article
listed by the previous poster:

Brooks, R.R. (1972) Geobotany and Biogeochemistry in Mineral Exploration.
Harper and Row.

Hope this helps.

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