Assessment of soil contamination by heavy metals and arsenic in Tamesguida abandoned copper mine area, Médéa, Algeria.

Heavy metal and arsenic pollution of soil remains a serious environmental problem long after mining operations have ended. For instance, the Tamesguida copper mine located in north-central Algeria has been abandoned for several decades without restoration or even an environmental impact assessment. Therefore, soils were collected from several locations in the vicinity of the old mine and tailings and analyzed for their Cu, Cr, As, Pb, Ni, Zn, and Fe rates to gauge the scope of the soil contamination caused by these elements, and assessing their origin and their dispersion in the mine area.

Doomed to collapse: Why Algerian steppe rangelands are overgrazed and some lessons to help land-use transitions.

This work illustrates the application of a simulation model to analyse how swiftly large-scale land-use changes can drive broad territories to collapse. In this sense, the economic needs of a population should not clash with the natural environment but rather be reconciled with it. Abundant literature deals with the integration of socioeconomic drivers, ecological aspects, farming management, and climatology related to Algerian rangeland degradation.