Contrasted Hg contamination in soils and sediments in the area of the Dobczyce Reservoir
Authors:
- Gabriela Zemelka,
- Jean-Luc Loizeau,
- Ewa Szalinska
Abstract
The majority of present total mercury (Hg) releases to the environment are through atmosphere emissions from human activities, such as coal burning and smelting of metal ores. Mercury returns to the Earth’s surfaces by both wet and dry fallouts and accumulates on soils. Therefore, can have a long-term impact on freshwater ecosystems with transfer via soil erosion being an important process. The main aim of our study was to compare the Hg contamination in soils from four land use types (forest, arable land, meadows and pastures, and residential areas), bottom sediments, and suspended matter in two tributaries (the Raba River and Wolnica Stream watersheds) of the main drinking water reservoir of Cracow City. The Raba River watershed is more populated and shows 13 % of its total area covered by built surfaces, while urbanized areas cover only 3 % in the Wolnica Stream watershed. Mercury concentrations presented here were measured by CVAAS and these results will complement greatly the existing database for metallic elements in this area. Overall, higher Hg concentrations were measured in the Raba River watershed than in the Wolnica Stream watershed, especially in the bottom sediments (median values 0.305 mg/kg and 0.034 mg/kg, respectively). Elevated Hg concentrations were also detected in arable land (median value 0.200 mg/kg and 0.050 mg/kg, respectively), and meadows and pastures (median value 0.117 mg/kg and 0.046 mg/kg, respectively). Compared to the upper crust geochemical background value (0.04 kg/kg), the Wolnica Stream watershed does not present significant contamination, whereas in the Raba River watershed, arable land showed a 4-fold factor, and meadows and pastures a 2-fold factor. The contrasted Hg concentrations are interpreted as differences in local land use management, including anthropogenic activities such as coal burning, direct inputs from municipal pollution, sludge wastewater management.
- Record ID
- CUTee61ed1a48e84d529dffb92b4a717f70
- Publication categories
- ;
- Author
- Pages
- 176
- Book
- ICMGP 2019 : 14th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, September 8-13 2019, Krakow, Poland : abstract volume, 2019, Krakow, [s.n.]
- Keywords in English
- mercury pollution, anthropogenic impact, land use, watershed inputs
- Language
- eng (en) English
- Score (nominal)
- 0
- Uniform Resource Identifier
- https://cris.pk.edu.pl/info/article/CUTee61ed1a48e84d529dffb92b4a717f70/
- URN
urn:pkr-prod:CUTee61ed1a48e84d529dffb92b4a717f70
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