Preliminary Study on Mineral Identification in Sediment from Sungai Nal, Ulu Sat Forest, Kelantan, Malaysia

Abstract

Ulu Sat Forest, Kelantan is rich with various biodiversity and been protected and reserved from any illegal logging activity. Previous studies mainly focus to explore biodiversity of the forest, without any in-depth investigation to explore mineral distribution in soil. This paper is baseline study which investigated mineral distribution in sediments from different sites of Sungai Nal (Nal River), as well as different core depth, which were situated at Ulu Sat Forest, Kelantan, Malaysia. Total of five surface sediment and one core were analyzed with X-ray diffraction (XRD) phase analysis, it was found that despite of sampling location and sampling core depth, the soil merely consisted of quartz (SiO2) mineral, without any traces mineral been detected. However, concentration of the quartz mineral did vary with the sampling locations as well as core depth of the sampling. Thus, mineral distribution in the soil was consistent as only quartz was detected by XRD analysis.