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Abstract
This paper reviews the ecological aspects of mined soil restoration, with special emphasis on maintaining a long-term
sustainable vegetation on toxic metal mine sites. The metal mined soils are man-made habitats which are very unstable
and will become sources of air and water pollution. Establishment of a vegetation cover is essential to stabilize the bare
area and to minimize the pollution problem. In addition to remediate the adverse physical and chemical properties of
the sites, the choice of appropriate vegetation will be important. Phytostabilization and phytoextraction are two
common phytoremediation techniques in treating metal-contaminated soils, for stabilizing toxic mine spoils, and the
removal of toxic metals from the spoils respectively. Soil amendments should be added to aid stabilizing mine spoils,
and to enhance metal uptake accordingly.
Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Table 3
Growth, nodulation, and nitrogen accumulation of S. rostrata grown in Pb/Zn mine tailings and tailings amended with sediment and
domestic refuse (from Yang et al., 1997)
Culture medium Plant height Biomass Nitrogen
Plant Stem nodule Root nodule accumulation
(DM g/plant) (FM mg/plant) (FM g/plant) (mg/plant)
and the legume-rhizobia symbiotic association, is im- of trees (e.g. willows and poplars) can remove sufficient
portant for using legumes in the reclamation of metal- heavy metals from soils to clean-up at least low-level
contaminated areas (Zhang et al., 1998). contaminated soils (Dickinson and Lepp, 1997). Table 4
compares the removal of Zn by different species of hy-
4.2. Using plants to remediate metal-contaminated sites peraccumulator plants and non-accumulating plants
growing in soils receiving 20 years of sludge application
4.2.1. Phytoextraction (Baker et al., 1994). The results indicated that the rate of
Phytoextraction is also called phytoaccumulation. It removal of Zn Thlaspi caerulescens was greater than the
involves the uptake and translocation of heavy metals by allowed maximum annual addition of Zn to soils, the
roots into the aboveground portions of ‘‘hyperaccumu- Belgian population (B) could remove twice amount. It
lator’’ plants. Some plants have a quite extraordinary was estimated that 13 croppings with this population
ability to accumulate heavy metals, to the extent they would be required to extract the excess loading of Zn
are described as hyperaccumulators. Hyperaccumulators (374 kg/ha) in the experimental soil to bring the total soil
are able to accumulate Zn concentration higher than Zn concentration down to below CEC limits, from
1%, and Cu, Pb and Ni higher than 0.1% of the tissue 444 to 300 mg/kg (CEC, 1986), provided if the subse-
dry weight (Baker et al., 1994). quent crops would remove metals at the same rates as
Hyperaccumulators of Ni, Cd and Zn have been the first crop. Therefore, metal-contaminated soils can
identified and characterized. There is sufficient evidence be cleaned up by sowing hyperaccumulating plants, after
showing that plants including certain species and clones several harvests of the plants along with the metals.
Plants are harvested and either incinerated or composted
to recycle the metals.
Table 4 Recently, we have observed that there is a potential
The extraction efficiency of Zn by different hyperaccumulator plant species, namely Commelina communis growing on
and non-accumulator plants (from Baker et al., 1994) the Cu mine spoils at Huangshi, Hubei Province, which
Plant species Plant Removal as Number have a high uptake of Cu, in the shoot, exceeding 1% of
uptake % of annual of crop- their total dry weight (Shu et al., unpublished data).
(kg/ha) permitted ad- pings Selective breeding, adding soil amendments to in-
dition rate crease metal uptake and transfer of hyperaccumulator
Hyperaccumulator species genes into genetically engineered crop plants are all real
T. caerulescens (popu- 30.1 201 13 possibilities and huge advances in these areas have been
lation B) made in the last few years (Chaney et al., 1998; Salt
T. caerulescens (popu- 27.6 184 14 et al., 1998). In addition, synthetic metal chelates, such
lation A) as EDTA and citric acid have been used as soil
Cardaminopsis halleri 10.3 69 37 amendments to enhance metal uptake by these hyper-
Alyssum tenium 4.3 29 88 accumulators (Luo et al., 1999; Wong et al., 1999a,b).
Alyssum lesbiacum 3.9 6 96
Recently, synthetic metal chelates have been used to
Alyssum murale 3.6 24 105
Thlaspi ochroleucum 1.5 10 254
artificially induce hyperaccumulation of toxic metals,
e.g., Pb from the soil into plant shoots (Huang et al.,
Non-accumulating 1997). Each cleanup situation may also require a dif-
Cochlearia pyrenaica 0.6 4 622 ferent plant species or a number of plants in tandem. In
Brassica napus 0.5 3 832 general, phytoremediation is used in conjunction with
Raphanus sativus 0.2 1 2046
other cleanup approaches (Asante-Duah, 1996).
M.H. Wong / Chemosphere 50 (2003) 775–780 779
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