Sandra Fischer

Sandra Fischer is a PhD student at the department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, since February 2017. She investigates the potential metal pollution spreading from mines to the surrounding environment and society.

Mining impacts can differ across the Arctic depending on e.g. hydrogeologic, geochemical and hydroclimatic conditions, and systematic observations are therefore needed from several different regions for comparison. Two case study areas have been initiated; the closed copper mine at Nautanen, northern Sweden, and the active apatite mines at Khibiny, Kola Peninsula, Russia.

Present work focuses on synthesis of available data on hydroclimate and hydrology (e.g. streamflow, precipitation, temperature) and geochemical data (e.g. water quality, contaminants in sediments) for the two sites. Several field measurement campaigns were performed in the summer 2017 where water and soil samples were collected and later analyzed. The objectives are to review the current status of contamination in relation to previously measured data from the two sites to be able to test more general hypotheses regarding governing processes for spreading of metal(oids) from Arctic mining areas.

Sandra’s work is part of RT 2; impacts of multiple pressures of Arctic landscapes and societies, where her work aims to fill an input need to strategic impact assessments of non-renewable resource extraction in Arctic regions with on-going rapid hydro-climatic changes.