How did the gold rush impact the environment?

Answer 1

Yes: it is inevitable that, where a concentrated number of people are digging into the ground within any area, the environment will be affected.

Environmentally, the goldrush was a disaster, although unrecognised at the time. Features of the Australian landscape were forever altered in the space of a few decades, and soil erosion was a major effect, the evidence of which can still be seen today. Alluvial gold mining left the environment cleared and razed in many places, whilst "mullock heaps" were left behind to scar the landscape.

Water quality was affected as people used the creeks and rivers for all their activities, including bathing and washing dirty (sometimes disease-ridden) clothes. Water salinity rose as natural watercourses were diverted.

Introduced noxious weeds decimated native flora and affected native fauna, as did the introduction of domestic animals to hitherto unpopulated areas.

Answer 2

The gold rush in California changed the environment, as well as the landscape. The mining destroyed areas of land and there were many dams constructed, which messed with riverâ??s natural courses.

Answer 3

Environmentally, the goldrush was a disaster, although unrecognised at the time. Features of the Australian landscape were forever altered in the space of a few decades, and soil erosion was a major effect, the evidence of which can still be seen today.

Water quality was affected as people used the creeks and rivers for all their activities, including bathing and washing dirty, even sometimes disease-ridden, clothes.

Water salinity rose as natural watercourses were diverted. Introduced noxious weeds decimated native flora and affected native fauna, as did the introduction of domestic animals such as large stock/working animals to hitherto unpopulated areas.

Answer 4

Yes