Two sediment cores were collected from Hailing Bay located in a typical mariculture zone of Guangdong Province, South China, and analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The concentrations of the sum of 27 PAHs ranged from 62 to 1200 ng g(-1) dry wt, and sediment in the study area was considered to be moderately polluted by PAHs. Source diagnostics based on PAH composition and prin...

Thousands of stream miles in the southern Piedmont region are impaired because of high levels of suspended sediment. It is unclear if the source is upland erosion from agricultural sources or bank erosion of historic sediment deposited in the flood plains between 1830 and 1930 when cotton farming was extensive. The objective of this study was to determine the source of high stream suspended sed...

Water, suspended particulate matter (SPM), and sediment samples were collected from ten rivers in Tianjin and analyzed for 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), particulate organic carbon (POC) in SPM and total organic carbon (TOC) in sediment. The behavior and fate of PAHs influenced by these parameters were examined. Generally, organic carbon was the prim...

Sediment deposited within lake basins can preserve detailed records of past environmental conditions on planetary surfaces, including both Earth and Mars. Establishing how to best characterize these paleoclimate records is thus critical for understanding the evolution of past planetary climates. Here, we present an ~40 k.y. lake sediment record from Lake Towuti, Indonesia, developed using visib...

Sediment generated by interrill erosion is commonly assumed to be enriched in soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to the source soil. However, the reported SOC enrichment ratios (ERSOC) vary widely. It is also noteworthy that most studies reported that the ERSOC is greater than unity, while conservation of mass dictates that the ERSOC of sediment must be balanced over time by a decline of SOC in...

In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of riparian buffers between agricultural fields and waterbodies. Riparian buffers play an important role in mitigating the impacts of land use activities on water quality and aquatic ecosystems. However, evaluating the effectiveness of riparian buffer systems on a watershed scale is complex, and watershed models have limited ...

Creosote, a complex mixture of aromatic compounds (ACs), contaminates numerous sites in the USA and elsewhere. In addition to pollution of the water column directly after a creosote spill, contaminated sediments can continue to act as source of pollution for many years, because natural and anthropogenic perturbations may redissolve or resuspend sediment-associated contaminants. A 48-h static re...

A quantitative understanding of both natural and anthropogenic sediment sources is needed to accurately assess and predict the potentially adverse effects of land development on aquatic ecosystems. The main objective of this study was to quantify sediment production and delivery rates in a dry tropical environment on the island of St. John in the eastern Caribbean. One to three years of measure...

Suspended sediments in fluvial systems originate from a myriad of diffuse and point sources, with the relative contribution from each source varying over time and space. The process of sediment fingerprinting focuses on developing methods that enable discrete sediment sources to be identified from a composite sample of suspended material. This review identifies existing methodological steps for...