Bringing a Superfund Site into Focus

^{Image Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory}

This 60 square mile map shows hazardous waste areas at the California Gulch Superfund Site near Leadville in the Central Colorado Rockies.

The site has been mined for gold, silver, lead, and zinc for over 130 years. These activities have contaminated a 12 square mile area with a variety of waste rocks, smelter effluents, and debris piles, as illustrated in the map. Blue and white denote the most acidic and hazardous minerals, which release lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other waste products into snowmelt and thunderstorm runoffs. Green and red denote less hazardous minerals. Other colors and black denote materials of little environmental concern.

The map is based on data obtained from an aircraft remote sensing instrument developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A computer program developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which recognizes the unique color signatures of light reflected from the different minerals, was used to convert the raw data into the above map.

Maps such as this one help to speed up hazardous waste clean-up and cut costs. They demonstrate the benefits of collaboration between U.S. government agencies with different responsibilities and areas of expertise. The map is the product of NASA remote sensing technology and USGS data analysis techniques. It is being used in the Leadville clean-up efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the USGS, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR).

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The above image (including a full description of the color coding), other images, graphics, and a thorough description of this work may be found in an on-line report by Gregg Swayze, Roger Clark, and K. Eric Livo of the USGS, and Ronald Pearson of the USBR:

http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/PAPERS.Leadville95/leadville1.html

The JPL remote sensing instrument used in this work, the Airborne Visible and Infra-Red Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), is described at these two sites (the second site has more details):

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mip/aviris.html

ftp://ophelia.jpl.nasa.gov/README.htm

The data analysis techniques and other applications, including the analysis of minerals in planets and asteroids using interplanetary spacecraft data, are described by the USGS Spectroscopy Lab:

http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov

Get more information on the Leadville mapping in March 13, 1996, press releases by NASA and the USGS:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/NewsRoom/releases96.html

http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/PAPERS.Leadville95/press.release.3.13.96.html

Other environmental programs of the Bureau of Reclamation are described at this site:

http://donews.do.usbr.gov/Denver/tsc/engrgeology/Eng_Geo.html

Check out other observations in the Observation of the Week Archive.