V. Kavvadias, A. Sarris, M. Doula, D. Zaharaki, D. Arapoglou, K.Komnitsas,presented at 2nd
International Conference "Hazardous and Industrial Waste
Management",Chania, Crete,2010.
The uncontrolled disposal of olive oil mill wastes in not properly designedevaporation ponds or directly on soil can cause severe damages to soil properties, affect its qualityand subsequently deteriorate the quality of surface- and groundwater in neighboring areas. The aimof this work was to monitor the effects of wastes disposal on soil properties and to develop a soilinformation and monitoring system for olive oil mills wastes disposal sites with the use of GIS andparameters-indicators for soil quality. Five olive oil mills sites were selected in a pilot municipalityin Rethymnon, Crete, South Greece, three of them are active for more than 10 years and two areinactive for the last 6 years. Periodical soil sampling campaigns reveal significant changes in soilproperties. The sampling regions have been connected to map layers and an accompanying databaseof the measured parameters. On-the-fly diagrams that show the temporal fluctuations of thechemical parameters were formed and updated continuously following the corresponding analysisphase. At the same time, surfaces of the most critical parameter-indicators are formed based onkriging interpolation to define their spatial distribution in the wider waste disposal areas. Theparticular maps are superimposed on other available map layers (e.g. land use, vegetation, geology,erosion, a.o.) contributing to the study of the correlation and effects of the specific pollutionparameters to the rest of the environmental attributes of the area.