Journal
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 342, Issue 1-3, Pages 245-259Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.12.045
Keywords
persistent organic pollutants; mass balance modelling; freshwater contaminant dynamics; contaminant degradation; Arctic limnology
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Elevated concentrations of some persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in fish from arctic and subarctic lakes have been hypothesized to be due to processes within food webs and fish physiology. We investigated limnological processes and contaminant chemistry as explanations of these elevated concentrations by developing and applying fugacity-based mass balance models to a relatively small lake in the high arctic and a series of larger lakes in the southern Yukon River basin. The results indicate that high arctic lakes are transient and inefficient sinks for POPs. The mobility of POPs in high arctic lakes is conferred by their hydrologic regime (i.e. partial through flow of melt water loadings) and minimal scavenging and retention in sediments due to extremely low organic carbon in settling and sediment particles. Contaminant dynamics in lakes of the south Yukon River basin are governed by hydrology (i.e., water residence time), because, similarly to high arctic lakes, most of the contaminant inventory resides in the water column due to inefficient scavenging by settling particles. For the less persistent compounds, long water residence time shifts the major loss process from export to degradation. Model results also suggest relatively short degradative half-lives of the hexachlorocyclohexanes (Sigma HCHs) and endosulfan, particularly in high arctic Amituk Lake. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available