Incidence of the Almadén historical mining district on the hydrochemical characteristics of Valdeazogues Basin (Spain)

The distribution of dissolved potentially harmful elements (PHEs), major ions and physico-chemical parameters in the Valdeazogues river basin was studied during 9 surveys, carried out between 2010 and 2013. The observed physico-chemical parameters depend on the season, the major ions depend of the nature of the lithological materials and the PHEs depend of the characteristics of the mine inputs. The Principal Component Analysis performed on the analysed dataset, distinguished the sources of contaminants introduced into waters and that nowadays mine runoffs play a role higher than the played by the natural inputs.