ANR (2025 - 2029) : LandMine

Plant plasticity/Adaptation to contamination resulting from past Mining activities in the Alps

Team involved : MEEBIO
Platform involved : AAEM, EXAM, MEMOBIO
Main contact person : Muriel RAVETON (LECA, UGA)

Summary :

Mine wastes contain significant amounts of trace metals and metalloids (TMM ; eg, Pb, As, Sb, Cd, Cu, Hg) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). In abandoned mines, dispersal of these contaminants into critical zone may allow them entering the trophic chain and threatening the ecosystems. Due to a favorable geological context, ores have been mined for millennia in mountain areas, leaving behind large volumes of wastes in an ecologically sensitive context. Even though hundreds of mines are abandoned in the French Alps, neither characterization of TMM and PAH in the mine wastes and the associated environmental consequences are not clearly established.

 

The LandMine project aims to study the impact of mine wastes on the plant cover of the alpine vegetation belt (>2100m a.s.l.) in particular by taking C. resedifolia and Poa alpina, which are often found onto soils highly enriched in TMM and PAH, as biological models. For this, the project will federate an interdisciplinary approach essential to i) characterize the exposome in relation with the history of past mining activities, ii) determine plant assemblages tolerant to mine wastes and their contamination in TMM and PAH, iii) study the ecophysiological responses of C. resedifolia and Poa alpina under stress of mine exposomes, as well as iv) test the genetic adaptation of C. resedifolia and Poa alpina populations to mine wastes. The innovative character of this project is to tackle the micro-evolutionary response of plant species under contaminant stress and to select ecophysiological proxies to monitor plant tolerance in alpine mine wastes.

Partners :

  • LECA - CNRS - Université Grenoble Alpes - Université Savoie Mont Blanc (Laboratoire d’Écologie Alpine)

– Muriel RAVETON
– Florian BOUCHER
– Stéphane REYNAUD
– Sylvie VEYRENC
– Frédéric LAPORTE
– Cindy ARNOLDI

  • ISTerre - CNRS/UGA - Grenoble (Institut des Sciences de la Terre)

– Stéphane GUEDRON
– Géraldine SARRET
– Sylvain CAMPILLO
– Marie-Christine BAILLY-MAITRE

  • EDYTEM - CNRS/USMB - Chambéry (Environnements, Dynamiques et Territoires de Montagne)

– David GATEUILLE
– Magali ROSSI
– Jérôme POULENARD

  • LRSV - CNRS/University - Toulouse (Laboratoire de Recherche en Sciences Végétales)

– Guillaume MARTI

  • Jardin du Lautaret - CNRS/UGA - Grenoble

– Rolland DOUZET
– Pascal SALZE
– Maxime ROME