Mats Wallin

Barium as a Potential Indicator of Phosphorus in Agricultural Runoff

In many catchments, anthropogenic input of contaminants, and in particular phosphorus (P), into surface water is a mixture of agricultural and sewage runoff. Knowledge about the relative contribution from each of these sources is vital for mitigation of major environmental problems such as eutrophication. In this study, we investigated whether the distribution of trace elements in surface waters can be used to trace the contamination source. Water from three groups of streams was investigated: streams influenced only by agricultural runoff, streams influenced mainly by sewage runoff, and reference streams. Samples were collected at different flow regimes and times of year and analyzed for 62 elements using ICP-MS. Our results show that there are significant differences between the anthropogenic sources affecting the streams in terms of total element composition and individual elements, indicating that the method has the potential to trace anthropogenic impact on surface waters. The elements that show significant differences between sources are strontium (p < 0.001), calcium (p < 0.004), potassium (p < 0.001), magnesium (p < 0.001), boron (p < 0.001), rhodium (p = 0.001), and barium (p < 0.001). According to this study, barium shows the greatest potential as a tracer for an individual source of anthropogenic input to surface waters. We observed a strong relationship between barium and total P in the investigated samples (R(2) = 0.78), which could potentially be used to apportion anthropogenic sources of P and thereby facilitate targeting of mitigation practices.

Assessing soil erodibility and mobilization of phosphorus from Swedish clay soils – Comparison of two simple soil dispersion methods

Abstract Erodibility of Swedish clay soils estimated according to the existing methods is usually low, but high levels of suspended solids and attached unreactive phosphorus have been recorded in drainage water from fields and catchments dominated by clay soils. Inherent susceptibility to soil erosion is usually assessed through aggregate stability studies or dispersion tests. The latter are simple to perform and produce good results when compared against runoff lysimeter experiments. The environmental soil test to determine the potential for sediment and phosphorus transfer in runoff from agricultural land (DESPRAL) and soil suspension turbidity (SST) dispersion tests, which differ in soil–liquid ratio and shaking and settling times, were compared here for their ability to indicate the erodibility of 10 Swedish clay soils. The tests proved to be significantly correlated (r=0.78), but DESPRAL showed higher repeatability (r i =0.995) than SST (r i =0.824). Variation in soil dispersion was explained by clay, sand and organic matter content in DESPRAL and by clay and sand content in SST. An additional study on the effect of soil storage duration on dispersion (DESPRAL test) in 15 soil samples showed that storage had no effect on some soils, but significantly decreased dispersion in others after only 8 weeks. Therefore, soil dispersion tests should be performed as soon as possible after sample drying. The DESPRAL and SST tests proved to be a good option for estimating the erodibility factor K in the Revised Universal Soil Loss equation under Swedish conditions and were able to differentiate the susceptibility to sediment losses for different clay soils. They provided an indirect measure of the amounts of sediment and P mobilized, but further work is needed to calibrate them against measured values at field and catchment scale.

Assessment of nitrogen pollution reduction options in the river Nemunas (Lithuania) using FyrisNP model

Abstract The paper quantifies and discusses diffuse and point sources total nitrogen (TN) inputs as well as retention and TN reduction options in the catchment of the main Lithuanian River Nemunas. Modelled average TN export between 2000–2006 from the River Nemunas catchment to the Baltic Sea was 37620 tonnes TN yr−1 according to the data oriented FyrisNP model. Loads of TN from diffuse and point sources as well as retention have been estimated for five subcatchments of the River Nemunas including the external load from Belarus. Agriculture contributes 74.6 to 89.5% of the TN load, increasing with the percentage of arable land and load from point sources. The main point source input is poorly treated wastewater at Kaunas city. The contribution from forest land to the TN load increases from 2.2% to 15.8% with an increase in forest land from 28.5 to 56.9% of the total subcatchments area. The highest retention of TN (30.7%) was observed in the Neris river subcatchment with the lowest hydraulic load (5.55 m y...