Assessment of soil contamination around an abandoned mine in a semi-arid environment using geochemistry and geostatistics: Pre-work of geochemical process modeling with numerical models

► We study the soil contamination in the surrounding areas of an abandoned mine site. ► Statistical techniques are very useful in determining the geochemical background. ► GIS based on geostatistics is a powerful tool for elaborating geochemical maps. ► The soils were highly contaminated by Cu, Pb, Zn, As and Fe. ► The origin of the soil contamination is the Kettara mine wastes.