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Anthropogenic disturbances influence mineral and elemental constituents of freshwater lake sediments

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Abstract

Lake sediments can provide valuable insights into anthropogenic disturbances such as intensive aquaculture and land use changes. These disturbances often manifest as elevated levels of nutrients and elements within the sediments. This paper uses several analytical techniques, i.e., FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy), XRD (X-ray diffraction), EDS (energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy), and SEM (scanning electron microscopy), to examine the elemental constituents of lake sediments, along with their relative mineral abundances and surface morphology. The selected freshwater lakes are from the Central Gangetic Plain. The analysis provides a “fingerprint” of geogenic and biogenic mineral constituents of the sediments. Physicochemical, mineralogical, and elemental analysis shows that intensive aquaculture activities in lake alter the sediment chemistry as evidenced by the increase in pH, organic carbon, organic matter, and total phosphorus which is not observed in the lake where aquaculture is prohibited. Freshwater lake sediment is characterized by a high content of biogenic silica and carbonate minerals. The variations in sediment nutrients and mineral fluxes of the selected lakes are mainly attributed to diverse anthropogenic pressures, differences in lake productivity, and the overall ecological condition of the lakes. In the selected three lakes, major variation was reported in the autochthonous sediments in comparison to the allochthonous sediments. The study concludes that catchment and biotic deposit variations in the lakes cannot be evened out by in-lake mixing mechanisms due to variations in the terrigenous and pelagic deposits of the lake. The results highlight the importance of studying annual fluctuations and spatial variations in geogenic and biogenic mineral particle fluxes in lakes. Such investigations provide valuable insights into the annual dynamics of minerals within lakes, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of their behavior and distribution.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the University Sophisticated Instrumentation Centre (USIC) and the Department of Environmental Science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), Lucknow to carry out this work. The permission to carry out fieldwork in the Samaspur Bird Sanctuary in Salon, Uttar Pradesh by the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department is gratefully acknowledged. The first author is thankful to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for providing the doctoral fellowship for this study.

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  1. River Systems and Aquatic Ecology Lab, Department of Environmental Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, India

    Divya Dubey, Saroj Kumar & Venkatesh Dutta

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  1. Divya Dubey
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Contributions

Divya Dubey: Project administration, Methodology, Data curation, Interpretation of FTIR and XRD, SEM and EDS data, writing-review and editing of original draft Saroj Kumar: Review, Formal analysis Venkatesh Dutta: Conceptualization, Supervision, Methodology, Validation, Writing-review and editing, Finalization of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Venkatesh Dutta.

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Dubey, D., Kumar, S. & Dutta, V. Anthropogenic disturbances influence mineral and elemental constituents of freshwater lake sediments. Environ Monit Assess 195, 1459 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12063-2

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