Acta Facultatis Ecologiae - Technická univerzita vo Zvolene

148The most important Podlipa deposit dump--field, which represents about 2 km 2 area, is situated1 km east of the village center, at the south slope ofthe Vysoká spot height (995.5 m), in western directionfrom the Zelená Valley (Fig. 1). It is situatedin the Ľubietová crystalline complex of Permianage which consists of greywackes, arcose schistsand conglomerates [1]. The deposit was exploitedby 18 adits from 570 to 700 m (Fig. 1), from thebottom adit Empfängnis to the top adit Francisci[3]. Copper content in manually graded ore wasabout 4–10 wt. %. Copper content in dump wastematerial was 0.9–2.4 wt. % [1, 4].Heavy metals can reach plants from the soilsdue to their higher content in the base rocks orfrom the sources of different anthropogenic activities.Heavy metals from the air pollutants canreach plants through pores/water or soil solution[5]. Their penetration influences soil-ecologicalconditions such as soil types, soil pH, concentrationsand bonds of heavy metals, humus contentin soil, oxidative-reductive conditions around rootsystem connecting with microbial decompositionof inorganic and organic substances, soil moisture,temperature, utilized fertilizes and preparations forplant protection [6].Natural installation of mine waste dumps byplants is inhibited due to fine-grained soil flushingfrom the slopes and fast draining of rain water fromthe surface into the basal level of dumps or into theimpermeable sub-soil by soil-forming substratum.Therefore only several large mine waste dumpsprovide the possibility to enroot to resistant plantsin depressions or at local plains after centuries.Many authors have devoted to the study of plantcontamination at the mine waste dumps in recentyears [7–12].The main aim of the presented work was themonitoring of heavy metal pollution in differentplant tissues. We sampled also the stream water,drainage water (both from the reference and contaminatedsites), and water from wetland situatedbeneath the dump-field to get sense about the sourceof the studied heavy metals and about theirmigration.MATERIAL AND METHODSThe samples (of about 10 kg weight) of sedimentsfrom the dumps and soils from the 15–20 cmdepth, surface water (stream water, drainage water,and water from wetland) were collected for the characterizationof components of landscape contamination.To each water sample of 1 000 ml volumewas added 10 ml of HCl Following reference siteswere selected for comparison of territories loadedby heavy metals and non-contaminated naturalenvironment: planes A and B (Fig. 1) are situatedoutside of geochemical anomalies of heavy metalsand represent graywakes of Permian age, similarto material at the dump-field. The samples of plantmaterial were collected from the contaminated planesC, D, E, F (Fig. 1). Planes C and D are situatedon the terrace of the highest dump, plane G is belowthe dump of the Empfängnis adit and plane Eis the wetland below the dump-field.The realization of the plant sampling was difficultat the contaminated planes C and D due tomissing vegetation cover. Vegetation creates smallisles and is enrooted in few depressions which haveenabled limited soil-forming process. The selectionof plant species was performed so that it could bepossible to compare all identical plant species fromthe contaminated planes with plants from the referencesites. The samples of hardwood species(Betula pendula, Quercus petraea, Salix fragilis),coniferous species (Pinus sylvestris, Abies alba, Piceaabies) and herbs (Juncus articulatus, Menthalongifolia) were studied. The samples of Acetosellavulgaris were collected at the contaminatedplanes. At everyone site 10 individuals of eachplant species were sampled to get average sampleFive coniferous individuals of approximately sameage were sampled for branches (in case of Piceaabies also needles) from the fourth or fifth spikewith approximate length of segment from 10 to 15cm. In the case of Pinus sylvestris were analysedtwo-years old needles. Roots of the same lengthand with 2–3 cm diameter were obtained from thesurface soil level. Similar mode of sampling wasused for hardwood species: 3–4 years old brancheswere sampled from the lower limbs. The sampleswere dried at laboratory temperature and then homogenized.The samples of technogenous sediments fromthe dumps and soils were dried and 0.25 g of samplewas heated in HNO 3-HClO 4-HF to fuming andtaken to dryness. The residue was dissolved inHCl. Solutions were analysed by ICP-MS analysein the ACME Analytical Laboratories (Vancouver,