FINGERPRINTS APPROACH TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF ANTHROPOGENIC TRACE-METAL SOURCES IN THE NEARSHORE AND ESTUARINE ENVIRONMENTS
ESTUARIES, 16 (3A):
488--495 (1993)Аннотация
The problem of source identification of anthropogenic pollutants in
a local marine environment has been intensively studied during the
last two decades. Recently we have started intensively using an approach,
called by us the ''fingerprints'' approach, for tracing anthropogenic
pollutant sources and for the description of various geochemical
and chemical processes related to contamination by anthropogenic
heavy metals in the marine environment. This approach was based on
the assumption that if anthropogenic pollutants for any particular
area had originated from the same source, then the pairwise relationships
between the concentrations of these pollutants in sediments from
various stations in the contaminated area would be linear. The discussed
approach was applied to the case study of heavy metal contamination
of the estuarine environment of the Kishon River (Israel). The ''fingerprints''
approach can be successfully used for source contamination assessments
even when there is significant trace metal fractionation or sediment
fractionation in an area under study. However, in these cases this
approach should be applied to each sediment fraction separately.
The distribution of various heavy metal ''fingerprints'' for sediments
from the case study of the Kishon River estuary and from the marine
area close to the estuary have been used for the explanation of heavy
metal redistribution on Kishon sediments consisting of a high fraction
of anthropogenic fluorite after the contact of these sediments with
seawater.