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Spatial distribution and risk assessment of heavy metals and As pollution in the sediments of a shallow lake

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Abstract

The concentrations and spatial distributions of eight heavy metals in surface sediments and sediment core samples from a shallow lake in China were investigated to evaluate the extent of the contamination and potential ecological risks. The results showed that the heavy metal concentrations were higher in the northern and southwestern lake zones than those in the other lake zones, with lower levels of As, Hg, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cr, and Ni primarily observed in the central and eastern lake regions and Cd primarily confined to areas surrounding the lake. The concentrations of the eight heavy metals in the sediment profiles tended to decrease with increasing sediment depth. The contents of Ni, Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd in the surface sediment were approximately 1.23–18.41-fold higher than their background values (BVs), whereas the contents of Cr, As, and Hg were nearly identical to their BVs. The calculated pollution load index (PLI) suggested that the surface sediments of this lake were heavily polluted by these heavy metals and indicated that Cd was a predominant contamination factor. The comprehensive potential ecological risk index (PERI) in the surface sediments ranged from 99.2 to 2882.1, with an average of 606.1. Cd contributed 78.7 % to the PERI, and Hg contributed 8.4 %. Multivariate statistical analyses revealed that the surface sediment pollution with heavy metals mainly originated from industrial wastewater discharged by rivers located in the western and northwestern portion of the lake.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41271213, 41230853), the China National Fund for Water Pollution Control and Management Project (No. 2014ZX07101-011) and the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZZD-EW-10). The authors express their thanks to Chen Yun and Xu Weiwei for their assistance with obtaining samples of the surface sediment and sediment cores. The authors are grateful to Zhang Hongmei, Gao Ming, and Zhu Yuxin for their assistance with the total organic carbon and total contents of heavy metals analyses. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments that helped improve the manuscript.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73# East Beijing Road, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, 210008, China

    Jiancai Deng, Xin Liu, Weiping Hu & Jinge Zhu

  2. Jiangsu Taihu Planning and Design Institute of Water Resource Co., Ltd., Suzhou, China

    Yuansheng Wang & Lin Zhu

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  1. Jiancai Deng
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Correspondence to Jiancai Deng.

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Deng, J., Wang, Y., Liu, X. et al. Spatial distribution and risk assessment of heavy metals and As pollution in the sediments of a shallow lake. Environ Monit Assess 188, 296 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5301-8

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