Signatures of recent pollution profiles in comparable central European rivers - Examples from the international River Basin District Meuse

摘要

Rivers are strongly influenced by humans. As the natural occurrence of trace elements (TEs) is controlled by the geological setting, elevated contents of TEs are caused by anthropogenic activities. TEs can be adsorbed at fine sediments and (re-)mobilized, transported and accumulated at the riverbed and as overbank deposits on the floodplains. Thus, rivers are the transition system for pollutants between their source areas and the depositional areas. To investigate the recent distribution of TEs related to different impact factors, suspendible riverbed sediments of three rivers with neighboring catchments (catchment size each +/- 350 km(2)) within the International River Basin District Meuse (border triangle between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) were analyzed. The aim is to compare the variability of pollution profiles (longitudinal TE distribution of sediment samples along the river) of three rivers, that are representative for central European foothills to lowland rivers, with both similar natural settings and disparate human impact factors, and to identify and analyze the 'fingerprint' of each river. Hence, a characterization of the individual pollution characteristics of the rivers, with past and recent TE sources, is achieved, which is applicable to other rivers with a similar land use history.