The problems of prospecting for deposits in covered by surface sediments territories that arose in the 20th century contributed to the development of ideas about the migration and concentration of chemical elements and their forms in the supergene zone. The theory of "jet-like" migration of chemical elements appears. All this contributed to the development of geochemical methods of prospecting for deposits by secondary dispersion halos, in particular, gold deposits. However, information on the migration and concentration of gold in loose sediments is insufficient to this day.

Forms of gold and arsenic, as one of the main pathfinder, were researched in eluvial, illuvial and parent material horizons of podzol soil at the Novye Peski gold deposit. Forms of gold and arsenic were studied with sequential extraction method. Results of this study showed that main forms of gold are water-soluble, bound to organic matter and “insoluble”, for arsenic: bound to Fe and Mn-(oxy)hydroxides and bound to organic matter. The form bound to organic matter was considered in detail and gold and arsenic were analyzed in humic and fulvic acids solutions extracted from podzolic soil. It was determined that gold is mainly bound to humic acid (HA), arsenic – to fulvic acid. Due to the prevalence of form of gold bound to humic acid, the modelling process of different gold and arsenic (III) contents sorption on solid humic acid were observed and data on quantity of adsorbed ions per unit mass of HA and recovery ratio were obtained. More than 90 % gold recovery rate was observed for concentrations less 10 µg/cm³ and for arsenic it was in a range 8 – 15 %.