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Distribution of Heavy-Metal Contamination in Regulated River-Channel Deposits: a Magnetic Susceptibility and Grain-Size Approach; River Morava, Czech Republic

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Abstract

Anthropogenic contamination by heavy metals in fluvial systems is mostly bound to fine-grained clay minerals and organic substances, which accumulate by vertical accretion in sediment traps along river courses (oxbow lakes, dams and floodplains). These environmental settings are considered as good archives of historical changes in contamination. Much less attention, however, is paid to deposits of river channels, which act as sourcing transport paths for these archives and/or build archives of their own. In order to provide a better insight into the spatio-temporal distribution of pollutants in channel deposits, we investigated contamination levels of Cu, Pb and Zn in a series of sediment cores along the River Morava, a left-hand tributary of the Danube River, Czech Republic. In particular, the relationships between metal concentrations, sediment lithology (facies), grain size, magnetic susceptibility and mineralogy and chemistry of fly-ash particles were investigated. Element chemistry and lithology of channel deposits were compared with those of the nearby floodplain deposits in the same catchment. Four river-channel facies were defined, ranging from sandy gravels to clayey silts, and confronted with the floodplain sediments. Al/Si ratios were found to be useful proxies of grain size, and Al was utilized as an excellent normalizing element for heavy metals, which filters out much of the grain size effects on contamination. The floodplain deposits are significantly less contaminated than their river-channel counterparts. Heavy-metal contamination of river bed sediments (expressed as enrichment factors, EFs) is not simply bound to fine-grained particles, and much of the contamination was found in coarse-grained, sandy facies. Elevated EFs of Zn, Cu and Pb in several sediment layers, which show high magnetic susceptibility (MS), high values of MS normalized to Fe and a high proportion of magnetic fly-ash spherules and their chemistry suggest that significant part of the heavy-metal contamination can be carried by magnetic fly-ash spherules. A part of this contamination is bound to coarse-grained fluvial facies, indicating that the magnetic spherules can be transported as bed load sediments. Magnetic pollution and heavy-metal pollution can therefore coincide in river bed deposits. It is suggested that most of this contamination can be related to local point sources of pollutants (fly-ash deposit spills).

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Acknowledgments

This study was partly supported by the projects P210/12/0573 (GA ČR), GA UK 462 10, IAAX00130801 (Grant Agency of AS CR), and RVO 61388980. Our special thanks belongs to Jana Dörflová, Zuzana Hájková and Petr Vorm (Institute of Inorganic Chemistry AS CR, Řež) for their laboratory samples processing, and to Zdeněk Dolníček, Jan Hladík, Tomáš Urubek (Department of Geology, Palacký University of Olomouc) for their assistance in the field.

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  1. Department of Geology, Palacky University, 17. listopadu 1192/12, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Martin Famera & Ondrej Babek

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 611 37, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Famera & Ondrej Babek

  3. Institute of Inorganic Chemistry AS CR, v.v.i, 250 68, Rez, Czech Republic

    Tomas Matys Grygar & Tereza Novakova

  4. Charles University in Prague, Albertov 6, 128 43, Prague, Czech Republic

    Tereza Novakova

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Famera, M., Babek, O., Matys Grygar, T. et al. Distribution of Heavy-Metal Contamination in Regulated River-Channel Deposits: a Magnetic Susceptibility and Grain-Size Approach; River Morava, Czech Republic. Water Air Soil Pollut 224, 1525 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-013-1525-1

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