Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Throughout the country, Morocco has many large mining areas rich in deposits. Some of them have been exploited for many decades. Morocco, like most developing countries in Africa, is burdened now with the legacy of abandoned mines. These once-thriving mining centres are today home to large quantities of waste materials without proper rehabilitation and management, not to mention the chemical and physical processing equipment left in situ. The Zeïda mine in North-East Morocco is one of these abandoned mines, characterized by three mine residues. The potentially hazardous content of these mine residues can pose a serious threat to the environment. The risk of contamination may extend beyond the area concerned, creating a threat based on mobility. Such a threat cannot be overlooked and must be taken into consideration, which is why the work below aims to evaluate the spatial distribution of heavy metals HMs (Cu, Pb, Zn, Cr, Cd and Ni) to assess the contamination level, to debate their sources via multivariate statistical analysis and to estimate the mobility of metals. The results of this work provide a useful database for the development of monitoring and rehabilitation strategies for this area. Ultimately, the issue of managing wind erosion of particles has become a pressing question, as has the need to understand and minimize, if not limit, the spread of these metals.