A Comparison of Sediment Metal Concentrations as Potential Stressors to Resident Benthic Communities in an Agricultural Waterbody

Abstract

This study was designed to (1) determine the relationship between the sediment concentrations of eight total metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Hg, Ni, and Zn) and five simultaneously extracted metals (SEM) (Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb) with 11 benthic metrics based on a three-year data set including two seasons per year for an agricultural water body (Cache Slough, California), and (2) rank the importance of individual metals within a metal mixture as potential stressors to resident benthic communities. The total arsenic, lead, and cadmium showed the highest number of statistically significant and ecologically meaningful relationships with benthic metrics. The total copper, nickel, zinc, chromium, and mercury were not reported to show any statistically significant and ecologically meaningful relationships with any of the benthic metrics. There were also no statistically significant and ecologically meaningful relationships between the benthic metrics and the simultaneously extracted (bioavailable) metals. Both stress tolerant and stress sensitive benthic metrics were reported to have the best discriminatory power for detecting the adverse effects from metals. Mixed agreement results were reported when comparing statistically significant and ecologically meaningful benthic metric relationships with the threshold effect level (TEL) exceedances for the various metals.

Developing a Portable Spectrometer to Detect Chemical Contaminants in Irrigation Water

“…Metal sources in the environment are both anthropogenic and natural. The sources include effluents from wastewater treatment plants, industrial and agricultural wastes, power stations, mining, boating activities, transportation vehicles, urban runoff and geological processes [6].…”

“…Untreated wastewater carries a substantial amount of heavy metals and causes potential ecological risks to the environment, food quality, soil health and sustainable agriculture [5]. Metals are toxic at concentrations above ambient conditions, non-biodegradable in the environment and accumulate in animal and plant tissue [6]. The absorption spectrum range of heavy metal ion is from 400 to 500 nm and the absorbance peak for copper ions is around 498 nm [7].…”

Agricultural Insurance, Risk Management and Sustainable Development

“…According to the World Bank, crop insurance accounts for a significant share of the world's agricultural insurance market. More than 90% of the insurance premium collected is financed by crop insurance [7]. In the Russian Federation, crop farming accounts for more than 95% of emergency losses in the agricultural sector.…”

“…Along with crop production, livestock and aquaculture also have many factors that affect production efficiency. For example, one of the stress factors affecting the productivity of aquaculture is the accumulation of heavy metals in the bottom sediment of water bodies [7].…”