Abstract

Chile is one of the major copper producers in the world, which entails a high economic benefit for the country. However, it has generated environmental impacts of several kinds, wherein the largest ones correspond to mine tailings. Mine tailings occupying large areas of soil and cause severe environmental impacts, either because of its toxicity and concentration or due to its interaction with environmental factors such as oxygen and water. Environmental problems associated with tailings disposal depends, among other factors, on the local climate. In the case, arid or semiarid climates, tailings are distributed to the environment through wind dispersion and erosion processes caused by water. In arid and semiarid regions, the establishment of the plant is restricted by several physicochemical factors that include extreme temperatures and high-speed winds. Phytoremediation, a low-cost in-situ technology, has emerged as the most promising remediation method for mine tailings with multielement contamination through the introduction of tolerant plants. These set of technologies using plants to clean contaminated sites, has a minimal negative impact on the environment when treating mine tailings, reducing the dispersion and bioavailability of metals, and returning the substrate to an acceptable ecological condition. The objective of this chapter is to offer the reader the results obtained by the team working with native or endemic plant species on mine tailings located in the Antofagasta region. The species under study were Adesmia atacamensis, Atriplex nummularia, Prosopis tamarugo, Schinus molle, Gazania rigens, and Pelargonium hortorum.