Stressors and Soil Contamination - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 36

Contamination
Impacts on geoenvironment

Receiving waters

Land Ecology

Contaminants
Contaminated land
Brownfields
Degraded land use,
Land capability,
Soil functionality,
Landfills, Lagoons,
Mineral resources
Groundwater,
Habitats
Public health

Water quality, BOD,
Health threats,
Dissolved oxygen,
Fecal coliform,
Inorganic carbon
and nitrogen,
Pesticides, pH,
Stream flow variation,
Temperature, TDS,
Toxic substances, Turbidity

Terrestrial and aquatic
species and population,
Terrestrial and aquatic
habitats and
communities,
Biodiversity loss,
Ecosystems functioning

FIGURE 2.1
Simple schematic showing some of the impacts, articulated as concerns and issues, for land , receiving waters , and
ecological system because of contamination of the land environment.

In view of the far-reaching primary and secondary effects of contamination of the land
environment and because these (a) impact severely on our ability to implement sustain-
ability practices for the geoenvironment, (b) directly affect our means to sensibly and
responsibly exploit the natural resources in the geoenvironment, (c) diminish the qual-
ity of the land environment and the very resources needed for mankind to sustain life,
(d) pose direct health threats to humans and other biotic receptors, and (e) degrade soil
quality and reduce the ability of the soil to function as a resource material, the discussions
in this chapter will pay particular attention to the problem of soil contamination due to chem-
ical stressors. The requirements and measures needed to mitigate contamination impacts
and the remedial actions required for recovery of soil functionality will be discussed in
the later chapters of this topic.
In addition to the very signiicant problem of contamination of the land environment,
there are other stressor impacts to the geoenvironment that have considerable effect on the
functioning of the land environment itself. The sources of these stressors originate from
a group of man-made events that have substantial physical impacts on the geoenviron-
ment landscape features, as discussed in Section 2.3. The projects and events included
in this group, identiied as the primary group, deal directly with the landscape features
of the geoenvironment. As such, the effects or impacts arising from the stressors associ-
ated with this group of events or projects most often result in threats to public safety and
loss or diminution of natural geoenvironment resources and natural capital. Examples of
these are the physical sets of activities associated with mineral resources and hydrocarbon
resources recovery (discussed in detail in Chapters 4 through 7).