This study characterizes various chemical and mineralogical properties of goethite and jarosite from a mine drainage environment using chemical extraction techniques, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), 57 Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Goethite and jarosite precipitates were collected from leachate-contaminated soils and from groundwater samples that were stored for up to 3 y. The results indicate that the soil goethites have primarily microcrystalline morphologies with moderately large mean crystallite dimensions (MCD 110 approximately 40 nm), and are superparamagnetic at room temperature and magnetically ordered at 77 K. The substitution of Al for Fe in the goethites is less than 0.03 mol/mol, and there is consequently no measured contraction in the goethite unit cell volume. The jarosite unit cell dimensions, Mossbauer parameters and chemical compositions indicate that the precipitates are primarily well-crystallized K-Na-H 3 O solid solutions, although the presence of poorly crystalline H 3 O-rich jarosite is also identified in one sample.

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