Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University, Yakutsk, Russia:

P. P. Danilov, Senior Researcher, Candidate of Biological Sciences, DanPP@mail.ru
G. N. Savvinov, Director, Doctor of Biological Sciences
A. A. Petrov, Senior Researcher, Candidate of Biological Sciences
V. S. Boeskorov, Senior Researcher, Candidate of Biological Sciences

The article offers fresh information on the actual ecological state of mining-generated surface formations and anthropogenic soil cover in the Mirny mining area. Based on the Classification and Diagnostic System of Russian Soil (2004), the soil is systematized and mapped with the identifi cation of the modern areals. The data of long-term monitoring of the ecology and soil in this area are generalized; the sections of macro-, meso- and micro-anthropogenic effect are detected by the degree of the soil transformation. The macro-anthropogenic effect sections are the areas where the natural soil cover is destroyed and the natural landscape is completely changed. Such sections include the areas of open pit mines, waste rock dumps and tailing ponds, storage lagoons and other waterworks. The meso-anthropogenic effect sections are the areas with the partly modified natural soil cover, i.e. with disturbed or removed upper humus horizon, or forest cover, or with the soil profile is compacted or extremely watered, etc. This group includes belts of “dead forest” around dumps and tailing ponds, where there is no mechanical disturbance of the soil cover but its chemical pollution is recorded, as well as the resident areas, lands around industrial infrastructure sites, causeways and dams, where the landfill operations change hydrological regime of the soil. The micro-anthropogenic effect sections are the areas subjected to indirect contamination with the low pollution load coefficients as compared with the regional background. In this manner, the anthropogenic transformations of the soil cover structure in the analyzed area are revealed. Generalization of the research findings allows drawing a conclusion on activation of soil salination in the analyzed area, especially in the sections of macro- and meso-anthropogenic effect. Salt accumulation mainly occurs in the upper layers of the surface formations and in the soil horizons. Due to the fact that atmospheric precipitations reduce (aridization of climate), the soil salination is connected with the internal upward flows. Accordingly, it is expectable that the area of the anthropogenic soil will enlarge and the polluted soil will become the chemically transformed soil.

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