Future trends in transport and fate of diffuse contaminants in catchments,with special emphasis on stable isotope applications

A summary is provided of the first of a series of proposed Integrated Science Initiative workshops supported by the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme. The workshop brought together hydrologists, environmental chemists, microbiologists, stable isotope specialists and natural resource managers with the purpose of communicating new ideas on ways to assess microbial degradation processes and reactive transport at catchment scales. The focus was on diffuse contamination at catchment scales and the application of compound‐specific isotope analysis (CSIA) in the assessment of biological degradation processes of agrochemicals. Major outcomes were identifying the linkage between water residence time distribution and rates of contaminant degradation, identifying the need for better information on compound specific microbial degradation isotope fractionation factors and the potential of CSIA in identifying key degradative processes. In the natural resource management context, a framework was developed where CSIA techniques were identified as practically unique in their capacity to serve as distributed integrating indicators of process across a range of scales (micro to diffuse) of relevance to the problem of diffuse pollution assessment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relative Lyapunov Indicator: An Efficient Method of Chaos Detection

A recently introduced chaos detection method, the relative Lyapunov indicator (RLI) is investigated in the cases of symplectic mappings and of a continuous Hamiltonian system. It is shown that the RLI is an efficient and easy-to-calculate numerical tool in determining the true nature of individual orbits, and in separating ordered and regular regions of the phase space of dynamical systems. An application of the RLI for stability investigations of some recently discovered exoplanetary systems is also presented.     

Mercury mobility and bioavailability in soil from contaminated area

The mobility and bioavailability of mercury in the soil from the area near a plant using elemental mercury for manufacturing thermometers, areometers, glass energy switches and other articles made of technical glass has been evaluated. Mercury has been determined by sequential extraction method and with additional thermo desorption stage to determine elemental mercury. The procedure of sequential extraction involves five subsequent stages performed with the solutions of chloroform, deionized water, 0.5 M HCl, 0.2 M NaOH and aqua regia. The mean concentration of total mercury in soil was 147 ± 107 μg g⁻¹ dry mass (range 62–393), and the fractionation revealed that mercury was mainly bound to sulfides 56 ± 8% (range 45–66), one of the most biounavailable and immobile species of mercury in the environment. The fractions that brought lower contribution to the total mercury content were semi-mobile humic matter 22 ± 9% (range 11–34) and elemental mercury 17 ± 5% (range 8–23). The contributions brought by the highly mobile and toxic organomercury compounds were still lower 2.3 ± 2.7% (range 0.01–6.5). The lowest contributions brought the acid-soluble mercury 1.5 ± 1.3% (range 0.1–3.5) and water-soluble mercury 1.0 ± 0.3% (range 0.6–1.7). The surface layer of soil (0–20 cm) was characterized by higher mercury concentrations than that of the subsurface soil (60–80 cm), but the fractional contributions were comparable. The comparison of mercury fractionation results obtained in this study for highly polluted soils with results of fractionation of uncontaminated or moderately contaminated samples of soil and sediments had not shown significant statistical differences; however, in the last samples elemental mercury is usually present at very low concentrations. On the basis of obtained correlation coefficients it seems that elemental mercury soils from “Areometer” plant are contaminated; the main transformation is its vaporization to atmosphere and oxidation to divalent mercury, probably mainly mediated by organic matter, and next bound to humic matter and sulfides.     

Direct versus indirect determination of suspended sediment associated metals in a mining-influenced watershed

The differentiation between the concentration of metals associated with suspended sediments and those in the dissolved phase is often of importance in aquatic ecosystems, for such reasons as toxicity evaluation, total maximum daily load calculations, and a better understanding of metal transport. Often, published water quality data include only concentrations of total and dissolved metals, with particulate concentrations assumed equal to the difference between the two. The validity of this assumption for mining-influenced waters is addressed in this paper by comparing data determined from the subtraction of total (acid-soluble) and dissolved (operationally defined as less than 0.45-μm) metal concentrations (difference method) with data obtained from acid-digestion of the particles retained on the filters used for filtering the dissolved fraction (digestion method). Greater than fifty water samples containing suspended sediment were collected from each of three sites in the Clear Creek Watershed in Colorado during a two and one-half year study on the fate and transport of metals in the watershed. Volumes of water filtered ranged from 50 to 250 ml, representative of typical volumes used for the determination of dissolved metal concentrations. The particulate-associated concentrations of Al, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn determined from the difference method compared well with the concentrations determined by the digestion method. Statistical analyses indicated that there is not a statistically significant difference between the two methods at the 95% confidence level, with p-values of 0.65, 0.88, 0.39, 0.67, and 0.75, for Al, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn, respectively, over the three sites.     

Site response zones and short-period earthquake ground motion projections for the Las Vegas Basin

A deterministic seismic hazard analysis was conducted to address the effect of local soil conditions on earthquake-induced strong ground motion in the Las Vegas Basin, Nevada (US). Using a large geological and geotechnical database, two response units were defined: a fine-grained unit, predominantly clay; and a coarse-grained unit, predominantly gravel. A moderate number of high-quality shallow shear wave velocity measurements were collected from which characteristic shear wave velocity profiles were developed for each response unit. An equivalent-linear one-dimensional site response model was used. The model was calibrated using a basin-wide, small-strain ground motion database. Calibration tests showed that ground motion projections become increasingly conservative with increasing ground-motion amplitude. Projections were overconservative for the coarse-grained response unit, likely due to the sparseness of the velocity database. For the earthquake response analyses, historical ground motions were used to model characteristic ‘bedrock’ motion for earthquakes on 10 faults judged to be critical. Response spectral envelopes were generated for each unit through Monte-Carlo simulations. For the fine-grained response unit, 95th percentile peak ground acceleration, peak spectral acceleration and predominant period were 310 cm/s², 1100 cm/s², and 0.29 s, respectively. With respect to codified design spectra, projections are lower at short periods and higher at long periods. Projections of peak spectral accelerations for the coarse-grained response unit, were more than double that of codified spectra; however, they are believed to be overconservative. Near-fault effects and basin-edge effects, though potentially important, were not considered in these analyses.     

The accumulation of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in the aquatic biomass of sulphide tailing ponds

Flooding mine tailings to limit the oxidation of sulfides provides a habitat for aquatic organisms, such as plants, plankton, insects, and fish, which can uptake metals and, thus, threats for local ecosystems and influence the cycling of elements in biogeocenosis. An aquatic ecosystem developed naturally in sulphide tailing ponds containing cyanidation wastes of the Salair ore-refining plant (SORP), Russia, was studied. The objectives of this research were to: (i) reveal the level of contamination of living organisms in the tailing ponds compared to a natural control site and (ii) calculate the weight of metals in aquatic biomass to estimate the amount of metals transferring from the tailing ponds into the biogechemical cycle. The concentration of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in the sediments of the tailing ponds is significantly higher than from the control site. Concentrations of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in plant shoots were significantly higher than in the control and accumulated mainly in cell envelopes and membranes. The concentration of Pb in fish liver and eggs were 41 and 7.5 times higher, respectively, than maximum allowable concentrations. The biomass distribution between producers and consumers of the tailing pond ecosystem is similar to those of natural pond ecosystems. However, the weights of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in all trophic levels per hectare of the tailing pond are orders of magnitude higher than those for Lake Baikal. The largest portion of metal circulates within the ecosystem of the Dyukov Ravine Pond with a maximum of 5 to 13% of this amount transferred into the surrounding environment through the food chains.