This paper describes a study examining the potential of mineral magnetic, geochemical and organic properties to determine if a 2003 wildfire in a catchment in British Columbia, Canada, caused a change in the sources of the suspended sediment transported in the channel relative to a nearby unburnt (reference) catchment. The results show that some of the properties offer the potential to determine sediment sources in the unburnt catchment. However, the 2003 wildfire modified the concentrations of some properties and this can either compromise or enhance their ability as tracers in the burnt catchment. At present, the source tracing results are inconclusive. This has implications for the use of certain properties as fingerprints and raises important issues about approaches to sediment source identification.

This is an expansion of the earlier Ocean Pollution (1996), revised by Sindermann (a former administrator at a number of ocean research laboratories of the US federal government) to be somewhat less technically daunting. The book considers the history and pathological consequences of coastal pollution living resource perspective. He first presents eight case studies of harms that have emerged at least partly as a consequence of coastal pollution. He then reviews the effects of coastal pollution on resource species and marine mammal, followed by a consideration of pollution's effects on humans. Annotation :2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The Erzgebirge, part of the so-called former “Black Triangle”, used to represent the strongest regional air pollution of Central Europe. To test the hypothesis of deposition enhancement with height, an altitudinal gradient along a N-S transect from the Elbe river lowlands to the Erzgebirge summit was chosen to investigate chemical composition, elevation-related variability, temporal changes, and seasonal patterns of ion concentrations from 1993 to 2002. The following questions were to be answered: (1) Which role does orography play on the composition of precipitation?, (2) Does fog occurrence overrule the orographic influence?, (3) Are there changes in the past 10 years, and if so, why?, (4) Do relevant seasonal changes occur and why? Air streams from westerly and to a lesser degree south-easterly directions prevail. The average precipitation was ion-poor (23 μS cm-¹ and acidic (pH 4.5). Sulphate still was the dominant anion (52.3-59.9 μeq L-¹, while NH⁺ ₄ determined the cations (41.9-62.2 μeq L-¹. Ion concentrations decreased with altitude to about 735 m a.s.l. and subsequently increased. The seeder-feeder effect largely explains the chemical composition of precipitation; enhanced in winter through snow crystals. Sub-cloud scavenging does not explain the observed patterns. Fog occurrence enhanced the observed effects at higher altitudes. Deposition amounts doubled from the lowlands to the Erzgebirge summit. From 1993 to 2002, acidity decreased by about 50%, mainly due to reduced SO₂ -emissions.

Sulfate (SO₄ ²-), nitrate (NO₃ -) and ammonium (NH₄ ⁺) concentrations in precipitation as measured at NADP sites within the Ohio River Valley of the Midwestern USA between 1985 and 2002 are quantified and temporal trends attributed to changes/ variations in (i) the precipitation regime, (ii) emission patterns and (iii) air mass trajectories. The results indicate that mean SO₄ ²- concentrations in precipitation declined by 37-43% between 1985 and 2002, while NO₃ - concentrations decreased by 1-32%, and NH₄ ⁺ concentrations exhibited declining concentrations at some sites and increasing concentrations at others. The change in SO₄ ²- concentrations is in broad agreement with estimated reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions. Changes in NO₃ - concentrations appear to be less closely related to variations in emissions of oxides of nitrogen and exhibit a stronger dependence on weekly precipitation volume. Up to one quarter of the variability in log-transformed weekly NO₃ - concentrations in precipitation is explicable by variations in precipitation volume. Trends in annual average log-transformed SO₄ ²- concentrations exhibit only a relatively small influence of variability in weekly precipitation amount but at each of the sites considered the variance explanation of annual average log-transformed SO₄ ²- by sampling year was increased by removing the influence of precipitation volume. Annual mean log-transformed ion concentrations detrended for precipitation volume (by week) and emission changes (by year) exhibit positive correlations at all sites, indicating that the residual variability of SO₄ ²-, NO₃ - and NH₄ ⁺ may have a common source which is postulated to be linked to synoptic scale variability and air mass trajectories.

The presence of hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI), in soil is an environmental concern due to its effect on human health. The concern arises from the leaching and the seepage of Cr(VI) from soil to groundwater. In this paper, a stabilization technology to prevent this problem was simulated on an artificial soil contaminated with hexavalent chromium. The process is a physico-chemical treatment in which the toxic pollutant is physically entrapped within a solid matrix formed by the pozzolanic reactions of lime and fly ash to reduce its leachability and, therefore, its toxicity. This paper presents the optimum ratio of fly ash and lime in order to stabilize artificial soils contaminated with 0.4 wt.% of Cr (VI) in a brief term process. The degree of chromium released from the soil was evaluated using a modified Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Overall, experimental results showed reduced leachability of total and hexavalent chromium from soils treated with both fly ash and quicklime, and that leachability reduction was more effective with increasing amount of fly ash and quicklime. Stabilization percentages between 97.3% and 99.7% of the initial chromium content were achieved, with Cr(VI) concentration in the TCLP leachates below the US EPA limit for chromium of 5 mg/l. Adequate treatment was obtained after 1 day of curing with just 25% fly ash and 10% quicklime.

Sediment cores collected in eutrophic subalpine Lake Bled (NW Slovenia) were analyzed sedimentologically in terms of grain size, mineralogy and sedimentation rates, and geochemically in terms of metals and nutrients. Surficial sediment is composed of dark gyttya type clayey silt with 5%-10% of organic matter. The sediment below is fine laminated and composed of homogenous silt and clayey silt: Mineralogically, low-Mg calcite prevails, followed by dolomite, quartz, partially of diatomaceous origin, and feldspar. Clay minerals are composed of muscovite/illite and chlorite. Authigenic minerals are pyrite and 'lake chalk' (low-Mg calcite). Lake sediment is especially polluted by Pb, Zn and P. Higher contents were found in the northwestern and eastern parts due to the particle input by local inflows. Increasing eutrophication and pollution, indicated by Cd, Cu, V, Cr, Co and total N and P enrichment in the top layers of the cores, started almost 100 years B.P., and especially 50 years ago.

A cross-disciplinary research project has been implemented because of increased awareness of the potential environmental effects caused by dispersion of metals from external applications into the environment. The work comprises a 4-year (1998-2002) field exposure of grades 304 and 316 stainless steels, and a laboratory percolation study simulating 20-25 years of chromium and nickel containing runoff water interactions with soil. Total metal annual release rates varied between 0.2 and 0.7 mg m-² yr-¹ for Cr, between 0.1 and 0.8 mg m-² yr-¹ for Ni and between 10 and 200 mg m-² yr-¹ for Fe. Most Cr and Ni is present in an ionic form as a result of the limited presence of organic matter at the immediate release situation. Metal ion concentrations in the runoff water are far below reported ecotoxic concentrations. Studies of the environmental interaction between runoff water from stainless steel and soil show the majority of released Cr and Ni to be retained and their concentrations in percolation water to be very low (0.5-1 μg L-¹ and 1-5.5 μg L-¹ for Cr and Ni, respectively). Speciation calculations showed Cr to be primarily complexed to dissolved organic carbon while Ni also was present in an ionic form in the solution phase. Soil extractions showed Cr and Ni to be very strongly retained within the soil.

Phytoremediation of pollutants in soils is an emerging technology, using different soil-plant interaction properties. For organic pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phytodegradation seems to be the most promising approach. It occurs mostly through an increase of the microbial activity in the plant rhizosphere, allowing the degradation of organic substances, a source of carbon for soil microbes. Despite a large amount of available data in the literature concerning laboratory and short term PAH phytodegradation experiments, no actual field application of such technique was previously carried out. In the present study, a soil from a former coking plant was used to evaluate the feasibility and the efficiency of PAH phytodegradation in the field during a three years trial and following a bioremediation treatment. Before the phytoremediation treatment, the soil was homogenized and split into six independent plots with no hydrological connections. On four of these plots, different types of common plant species were sowed: mixture of herbaceous species, short cut (P1), long cut (P2), ornamental plants (P3) and trees (P4). Natural vegetation was allowed to grow on the fifth plot (P5), and the last plot was weeded (P6). Each year, representative sampling of two soil horizons (0-50 and 50-100 cm) was carried out in each plot to characterize the evolution of PAHs concentration in soils and in soils solution obtained by lixiviation. Possible impact of the phytoremediation technique on ecosystems was evaluated using different eco- and genotoxicity tests both on the soil solid matrix and on the soil solution. For each soil horizon, comparable decrease of soil total PAHs concentrations were obtained for three plots, reaching a maximum value of 26% of the initial PAHs concentration. The decrease mostly concerned the 3 rings PAHs. The overall low decrease in PAHs content was linked to a drastic decrease in PAHs availability likely due to the bioremediation treatment. However, soil solutions concentration showed low values and no signficant toxicity was characterized. The mixture of the herbaceous species seemed to be the most promising plants to be used in such procedure.

Benthic infaunal communities at Mai Po Inner Deep Bay mudflat, Hong Kong were investigated between August 2002 and August 2003. A total of 55 species belonging to 8 Phyla from more than 99,074 specimens were recorded. The species richness varied between 13 at Station B in August 2002 and 28 at Station D in August 2003 with an average of 21 across the mudflat and the species diversity was low [H'(log₂) = 0.7-3.5 with an average H' = 2.4]. Seasonal variations were also observed through abundance and biomass across the mudflat among the seasons. The abundance density was between 8,977 individuals m-² at Station D in February 2003 and 77,256 individuals m-² at Station B in November 2002 and the overall average density was 25,274 individuals m-² for the four stations. The benthic infauna were dominated by pollution tolerant species at this wetland mudflat.