Distribution of soil heavy metal concentrations in an area contaminated by historical smelting and extractive processes.

Soils were collected on the basis of 25 pooled samples per km square throughout the 370km2 which makes up the district of North East Derbyshire in the North of England. This district has a history of metal mining on a small part of its area, largely confined to an area close to the town of Ashover and a, slightly more widely distributed, history of smelting activity. The only other known source of non-ferrous metals is the M1 Motorway that run along the eastern border.
Concentrations of extractable (hot 1+1 nitric acid) Pb, Cd, Zn and Cu were determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry and the results were plotted as both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional maps using SYMAP and the G3D plotting routine (under SAS) respectively. This poster illustrates both the effectiveness of the computer plotting programmes in revealing patterns in the data when this level of sampling intensity is undertaken and the relationship between metals an historic ore exploitation sites. The pattern of distribution of these elements was thus largely as expected from the historical distribution of mining and smelting sites which largely ceased over 250 years ago.