Element Content in Volcano Ash, Soil and River Sediments of the Watershed in the Volcanic Area of South Iceland and Assessment of Their Mobility Potential

Abstract

In this work, we present the results of element content in river sediments and soil of the Rangárvellir river in southern Iceland as well as in the volcano ash from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010. Severe natural catastrophes have devastating impact on the environment. We selected the Rangárvellir area located in the vicinity of Mt Hekla, Iceland’s most active volcano, for our study. This study site is ideal to investigate wind and water erosion and sediment transport processes of two main glaciers rivers: the Eystri-Rangá and the Ytri-Rangá and the Hroarslækur River. Sediments of these rivers consist of volcano materials, ash and lava. In order to assess the sediment dynamics, we collected sediment, soil and volcanic ash. The fractioning of the elements was carried out using sequential extractions. The distribution of Si indicates that the sediments originate from the same geochemical basis. Li and partly B exist in the first phase of volcanic ash and river sediments but not in the mobile phases of soils. In the mobile phase of volcanic ash, P was found but it did not exist in the first phase of soil and sediments. These results suggest the different chemical fingerprints in the water sediments and surrounding soil.

An Integrated Approach in the Assessment of the Vlasina River System Pollution by Toxic Elements

“…Sediment samples were collected with a plastic spatula (Sakan et al, 2007;Patel et al, 2018;Đorđević et al, 2021). Plastic shovels were used to collect sediment samples from shallow waters (Kemble et al, 1994), as well as to avoid metal contamination (Patel et al, 2018).…”

“…Pollution indices are widely considered as tools to quantify the degree of total metal pollution and assess the ecological risk of metals in sediments and soils Ustaoğlu and Islam, 2020;Carrillo et al, 2021;Ustaoğlu 2021;Yüksel et al, 2021). Multivariate statistical approaches have been successfully used in environmental studies to identify the interrelationships between the measured data (Sakan et al, 2009;Thuong et al, 2013;Mihajlidi-Zelić et al, 2015;Dević et al, 2016;Varol et al, 2021), in order to detect sources of pollution and relationships between sampling sites and toxic element contents (Radomirović et al, 2020;Đorđević et al, 2021). Chemometric methods provide powerful tools for the modelling and interpretation of large, environmental, multivariate data sets generated within environmental monitoring programmes (Peré-Trepat et al, 2006) and, for that reason, are used in many studies.…”