Suspended sediment has long been recognized as an important contaminant affecting water resources. Besides its direct role in determining water clarity, bridge scour and reservoir storage, sediment serves as a vehicle for the transport of many binding contaminants, including nutrients, trace metals, semivolatile organic compounds, and numerous pesticides (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 20...

Pitch discrimination interference (PDI) refers to an impairment in the ability to discriminate changes in the fundamental frequency (F0) of a target harmonic complex, caused by another harmonic complex (the interferer) presented simultaneously in a remote spectral region. So far, PDI has been demonstrated for target complexes filtered into a higher spectral region than the interferer and contai...

Oxygen demand in river substrates providing important habitats for the early life stages of aquatic ecology, including lithophilous fish, can arise due to the oxidation of sediment-associated organic matter. Oxygen depletion associated with this component of river biogeochemical cycling, will, in part, depend on the sources of such material. A reconnaissance survey was therefore undertaken to a...

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and polybrominated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PBDD/Fs) in surface sediment samples from Taihu Lake--an important water supply of the Yangtze River Delta, China--were investigated in the present study. Concentrations of PCDD/Fs ranged from 0.91 to 4.8 pg TEQ g(-1) dw (mean: 2.9 pg TEQ g(-1) dw, TEQ: Toxic Equivalent), which ...

In the US Environmental Protection Agency methods for sediment toxicity testing, the light regimen is specified as a 16:8 light dark cycle with 500-1000 lx. The potential for photoinduced toxic effects from this requirement is evaluated. Hyalella azteca were exposed to fluoranthene in both water only and sediment to examine the impact of light spectra on the toxicity of fluoranthene. The light ...

The major sources of dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in two sediment cores from Tokyo Bay and Lake Shinji (both in Japan) were identified and their source contributions estimated using two receptor models. The first was a nonnegative constrained factor analysis (FA) model, and the second was a nonnegative constrained chemical mass balance model combined with Monte Carlo techniques ...

Rates of nitrogen fixation (measured as acetylene reduction) in the rhizosphere of the seagrass Zostera noltjj were highly dependent upon plant photosynthetic activity being significantly stimulated at elevated CO2 concentrations and by light, both in the short-term and over diurnal cycles. Stimulation by light became insignificant when 5 mbl sucrose was added to the sediment porewater. indicat...