This paper presents the results of the distribution of salinity characteristics (electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio) of groundwater, and based on the results, it reports the evaluation of the salinity and sodicity hazards in the fluctuation processes of shallow mineralised groundwater, or in the processes if such groundwater is used for irrigation. The issue was studied for the soil-water environment in the south-east of the Danube Lowlands for the period 1991 to 1994. The measured data and data taken from archives were processed in the form of graphical attachments (appendixes, supplements, graphical documentation) -maps, by means of the kriging interpolation method. Groundwater in the area in question is classified as highly mineralised with a high hazard of salinisation of the subsurface soil environment. The average annual values of the electrical conductivity of groundwater ranged from 600 to 2100 µS/cm in the examined period. The sodium adsorption ratio values ranged from 1.7 to 22.0 and indicate low, medium to high sodium salinisation of the environment due to groundwater. The distribution of electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio on the regional scale can serve as a reference basis for the evaluation of changes in the groundwater salinity after 1994.

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Soil sorptivity is considered a key parameter describing early stages of water (rain) infiltration into a relatively dry soil and it is related to build-up complexity of the capillary system and soil wettability (contact angles of soil pore walls). During the last decade an increasing water repellency of sandy soils under pine forest and grassland vegetation has been frequently observed at Mlaky II location in SW Slovakia. The dry seasons result in uneven wetting of soil and up to hundredfold decrease in soil sorptivity in these vegetated soil as compared to reference sandy material, which was out of the reach of ambient vegetation and therefore readily wettable. As far as water binding to low moisture soils is governed by adsorption processes, we hypothesized that soil water repellency detected by water drop penetration test and by index of water repellency should also influence the water vapour adsorption parameters (monolayer water content, W m , specific surface area, A, maximum adsorption water, W a , maximum hygroscopic water M H , fractal dimension, D S and adsorption energies, E a ) derived from BET model of adsorption isotherms. We found however, that the connection of these parameters to water repellency level is difficult to interpret; nevertheless the centres with higher adsorption energy prevailed evidently in wettable materials. The water repellent forest and grassland soils reached less than 80% of the adsorption energy measured on wettable reference material. To get more conclusive results, which would not be influenced by small but still present variability of field materials, commercially available homogeneous siliceous sand was artificially hydrophobized and studied in the same way, as were the field materials. This extremely water repellent material had two-times lower surface area, very low fractal dimension (close to 2) and substantially lower adsorption energy as compared to the same siliceous sand when not hydrophobized.

A continuous hydride generation (HG) AAS procedure for the determination of As in geological samples utilizing the SH-group containing amino-acid L-cysteine for the pre-reduction of As (V) to As (III) in HNO(3) has been optimized and compared with a method utilizing KI and ascorbic acid in HCl. The influence of some transition metals (Co, Fe, Ni) on the determination of As has been investigated. Decompositions of geological certified reference materials, sediments and soils of different origin and geochemical composition with concentrated HNO(3) have been performed in open and closed systems and the resulting As content has been compared with certified and proposed data.