Abstract
An approach is presented to establish a state-wide basis for geochemical background values from the available data of the Geological Survey of Bavaria. For this purpose, typical element background concentrations of rock units in Bavaria were statistically evaluated and presented in a lithogeochemical map derived from the geological map at a scale of 1:25,000. The elements comprise 39 geogenic main and trace elements (SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, MnO, MgO, CaO, Na2O, K2O, TiO2, P2O5, Li, Be, Sc, V, Cr, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, As, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Mo, Cd, Sn, Sb, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Tl, Pb, Bi, Th, and U). The distributions of element concentrations in the lithogeochemical units follow closely lognormal patterns in a large majority of cases. Statistical parameters (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th percentiles) of investigated elements were determined using the cenfit function of the NADA package in the open-source R program. The investigation, based on 8,838 analysed samples, provided data for about 2/3 of the area of Bavaria. The lithogeochemical map with medians (50th percentiles) and background values (90th percentiles) of the investigated elements is available in a web map application. Thus, the regional geogenic background values of the investigated elements in Bavaria are publicly available for a large variety of applications, such as environmental issues and applied research questions.
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Acknowledgements
This study was carried out as part of the project “Soil Atlas Bavaria“. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding of the project by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the funding period 2014–2020 and by the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments that helped improve the paper.
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This study was jointly funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the funding period 2014–2020.
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BW: conceptualization; methodology; supervision; validation; writing—original draft; and writing—review and editing. AT: validation; methodology; data curation; formal analysis; investigation; software; visualization; and writing—original draft. DJ: supervision; validation; and writing—original draft.
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Wagner, B., Tammen, A. & Jung, D. Determining the lithogeochemical background concentrations of 39 elements in Bavarian rocks. Environ Earth Sci 81, 207 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10334-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10334-8