Influence of anthropogenic inputs and a high-magnitude flood event on metal contamination pattern in surface bottom sediments from the Deba River urban catchment

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of anthropogenic factors (infrastructure construction and industrial and wastewater inputs) and hydrological factors (high-magnitude flood events) on metal and organic contamination and on the source variability of sediments taken from the Deba River and its tributaries. The pollution status was evaluated using a sequential extraction procedure (BCR 701), enrichment factor, individual and global contamination factors and a number of statistical analysis methods. Zn, Cu and Cr were found to have significant input from anthropogenic sources, with moderately severe enrichment, together with an extremely high potential risk of contamination. The principal scavenger of Cu and Cr was organic matter, whereas Zn was uniformly distributed among all non-residual fractions. For Fe, the anthropogenic contribution was more obviously detected in bulk sediments (<2 mm) than in fine fractions (<63 μm). Finally, the recent construction of a rail tunnel traversing Wealden Facies evaporites, together with intense rainfalls, was the main reason for the change in the source variability of bottom sediments and metal distribution in headwaters. The occurrence of a high-magnitude flood event resulted in a washout of the river bed and led to a general decrease in fine-grained sediment and metal concentrations in labile fractions of channel-bottom sediments, and a consequent downstream transfer of the pollution.

Water treatment residuals as soil amendments: Examining element extractability, soil porewater concentrations and effects on earthworm behaviour and survival

“…All have limitations and all generate operationally defined fractions (see review by (Bacon and Davidson, 2008), but they are nonetheless useful for identifying easily extractable vs recalcitrant element contents and for comparative purposes. The scheme devised by the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) (Ure et al, 1993) has been employed extensively to examine metal fractionation in river sediments (Martinez-Santos et al, 2015;Pulford et al, 2009), aquaculture sludges (Nemati et al, 2011), sewage sludge (Scancar et al, 2000), urban soils (Gál et al, 2008;Madrid et al, 2007), agricultural soils (Kosolsaksakul et al, 2014), upland peat soils (Bacon et al, 2006), battlefield soils (Oliver et al, 2008) and in soils were pollution remediation trials (e.g. immobilisation with biochar or by zeolite formation) have been conducted (Belviso et al, 2010;Ippolito et al, 2017), hence it was chosen for this study.…”

Suspended sediment delivery from small catchments to the Bay of Biscay. What are the controlling factors?

“…The effect of infrastructure construction on the generation and source variability of sediments has been assessed by several studies (Rijsdijk et al ., ; Wu et al ., ). A more recent publication (Martínez‐Santos et al ., ) showed the effect of highway tunnel construction on sediments in one of the catchments analysed in the present paper (Deba catchment).…”

Preface

“…The high concentrations of these elements are one of the main causes of soil degradation. This is a serious problem in cities located in emerging economies such as China (Wei and Yang 2010;Wang et al 2013), India (Chabukdhara and Nema 2013; Subramanian et al 2015), Brazil (Ribeiro et al 2012;Rodrigo et al 2014;Garcia et al 2015), Mexico (Mireles et al 2012;Garcia-Flores et al 2016), in old industrial areas of Europe (Cachada et al 2012;Rodrigues et al 2013), Japan (Yang et al 2002), and the United States (Laidlaw et al 2012;Burt et al 2014). Recently, pharmaceutical components (e.g., antibiotics) started to be a concern in urban soils because of their high content as a consequence of wastewater irrigation of green areas (Wang et al 2014;Gao et al 2015).…”

“…Recently, pharmaceutical components (e.g., antibiotics) started to be a concern in urban soils because of their high content as a consequence of wastewater irrigation of green areas (Wang et al 2014;Gao et al 2015). All the substances mentioned have a strong negative impact on soil functions and human health (Brevik 2009;Luo et al 2012;Yuan et al 2014a, b;Garcia et al 2015). Toxic metals, PAH's, and pharmaceutical components can affect human health through direct ingestion, oral intake, dermal contact, inhalation, and diet through the soil-food chain (Thiele-Bruhn 2003;Malchi et al 2014;Wang et al 2015).…”

“…As a consequence of the high sediment availability in urban areas and presence of anthropogenic pollutants in urban soils and RDS, it is expected that urban runoff contains a high quantity of total suspended solids and pollutants McCarthy et al 2012;Gilbreth and McKee 2015;Weston et al 2015) that can contaminate freshwater environments (e.g., rivers, lakes, estuaries) (Xiao et al 2013;Yuan et al 2014a, b;Martinez-Santos et al 2015). In addition to the sediments and pollutants transported in runoff, wastewater discharges also contribute to aquatic environment pollution (Rodriguez-Mozaz et al 2015).…”