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Along with the increase of population, land resources are becoming more and more precious. Therefore, the evaluation of the reclaimed soil fertility is very important. The level of soil fertility is comprehensive reflection of many basic properties of soil, and is closely related to soil quality. In this paper, integrated digitization evaluation of soil fertility is used to evaluate soil of three typical reclamation areas in Huainan city, Anhui province, China. The results show that in three reclamation areas, the order of soil fertility level is XinZhuangZi reclamation area > DaTong ecological wetland > PanYi reclamation area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation of 43 soil samples and their corresponding wheat samples collected from Qinan (QN) and Luling (LL) coal mining areas in Suzhou, China, was conducted to study the accumulation of heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd, Cr and Ni) in the soil-wheat system, and to evaluate the potential human health risk posed by heavy metals from long-term ingestion of local wheat. Results showed that Cu, Zn, Cd and Ni were accumulated in the soils from the two mining areas, higher proportions of all the investigated metals in residual fraction were recorded, while large amounts of Cd, Cu, Zn, Pb were also observed in the bioavailable or potential bioavailable fractions. Metal contents in the different parts of wheat mainly followed the order of Root>Stem>Grain. The trends of Bioaccumulation factor (BF) and Translocation factor (TF) values were Zn>Cd>Cu>Ni>Pb>Cr and Cu>Cd>Zn>Cr>Pb>Ni, respectively. Correlation analysis suggested that the accumulated metals in the grain were mainly supplied from exchangeable and carbonate bound fractions in soil. Since the health risk posed by heavy metals ingestion was very close to the maximum allowable limit, the safety of wheat consumption in the coal mining areas should be continually concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the hydro-chemical variation of groundwater is important for water usage in the coal mines. In this study, twenty-one and eleven samples have been collected from the coal bearing and limestone aquifer systems, respectively in a coal mine in northern Anhui Province, China. And their major ion concentrations have been analysed by statistical methods including correlation, factor and cluster analysis. The results indicate that the hydro-chemical characteristics of the groundwater samples from these two aquifer systems are different, the groundwater samples from the coal bearing and limestone aquifer systems are dominated by Na-HCO3 and Ca-HCO3 types, respectively. Correlation and factor analysis, as well as traditional hydro-chemical methods indicate that dissolution of evaporates and carbonates, as well as weathering of silicates are contributors for the chemical variations of the groundwater samples. In combination with traditional methods, the study demonstrated that statistical analyses are useful tools for understanding the hydro-chemical variation of groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]