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Regional Contamination of Moravia (South-Eastern Czech Republic): Temporal Shift of Pb and Zn Loading in Fluvial Sediments

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Abstract

Regional contamination by Pb and Zn in southern Moravia (south-east part of the Czech Republic) in the twentieth century was analysed in Brno Dam lake sediments and in floodplain sediments of the Morava River near Strážnice. The age model for the Brno Dam lake sediments has been obtained by 137Cs (maxima corresponding to the nuclear tests in atmosphere and the 1986 Chernobyl accident) and the construction of the dam (1940); the time constraints for the Morava River sediments was the erection of flood defences (1930s) and 210Pb dating. In the case of floodplain sediments, profiles exhibiting post-depositional mobilisation of heavy metals by pedogenic processes (gleying) must be excluded to reconstruct the history of contamination. There was a relatively fast joint onset of Pb and Zn load since the early stages of industrialisation in the first half of the twentieth century, but then the concentrations of these two metals developed in a different manner. Pb load only slightly increased till its peak in 1960s and 1970s. The increase of Zn load was rather stepwise: Soon before 1930s (Morava River floodplain) and in 1940s and 1950s (in Brno Lake), the relative contamination by Zn was much lower than during its peak in the 1970s to the present days. The offset of Pb and Zn contamination curves could have been caused by three different artificial sources of these heavy metals. The temporal shift of Pb and Zn loads can be used for dating sediments.

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Acknowledgment

Works related to Brno Dam were funded by MSM0021622412 (INCHEMBIOL). The fieldwork in Morava River floodplain was funded by IAAX00130801 (Grant Agency of AS CR) coordinated by Jaroslav Kadlec (Geological Institute AS CR, Prague). XRF analyses were provided thanks to research project AV0Z40320502; 137Cs and lead isotope analyses were funded by GAUK project 46210; the Charles University workplace received institutional funding by project MSM0021620855. Jana Dörflová, Veronika Gemeinerová and Petr Vorm (Institute of Inorganic Chemistry AS CR, Řež) performed a huge amount of laboratory work with sediment processing and analyses. Zdeněk Máčka (Masaryk University, Brno) and Filip Stehlík (Geological Institute AS CR, Prague) kindly contributed by discussions about the Morava River floodplain geomorphology. We sincerely thank two relevant reviewers for reports which improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Inorganic Chemistry AS CR, v.v.i., 250 68, Řež, Czech Republic

    Tomáš Matys Grygar & Tereza Nováková

  2. Department of Geology, Palacký University, Tř. Svobody 26, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Jan Sedláček & Ondřej Bábek

  3. Faculty of Science, Charles University, Albertov 6, 128 43, Prague, Czech Republic

    Tereza Nováková, Ladislav Strnad & Martin Mihaljevič

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  1. Tomáš Matys Grygar
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  2. Jan Sedláček
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  3. Ondřej Bábek
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  4. Tereza Nováková
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  5. Ladislav Strnad
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  6. Martin Mihaljevič
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Correspondence to Tomáš Matys Grygar.

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Matys Grygar, T., Sedláček, J., Bábek, O. et al. Regional Contamination of Moravia (South-Eastern Czech Republic): Temporal Shift of Pb and Zn Loading in Fluvial Sediments. Water Air Soil Pollut 223, 739–753 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-011-0898-2

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