Soil Analysis and Investigation
Soil is a precious resource and its utilization depends on inorganic mineral composition
Soil is very important to our everyday life. We live on it, build on it, grow our crops in it, and allow our livestock to feed on vegetation grown in it. Automated Mineralogy is used to characterize soil in many different contexts including: pollution & dust (environmental mineralogy); forensic geosciences (crime scene profiling); agriculture & horticulture (especially viticultural soil quality); and surface mining (overburden characterization and mining of surface residual deposits containing gold, aluminium and nickel, of the type found in bauxites and laterites).
An increasing concern today is the effect of industrialization on soil quality, and Automated Mineralogy adds value to the study of soils by generating quantitative analysis on a particle-by-particle basis (environmental mineralogy).
An example is the examination of arsenic contamination in soil and its impact on human health issues. Chemical analysis is generally used to determine the absence or presence of arsenic. Automated Mineralogy is then used to quantify the mineralogical form in which the arsenic occurs, as this will help establish the potential bio-availability, which in turn impacts on the risk the arsenic poses towards humans or animals.