Prut river

Prut River s basin (Romania). A possible source of trans-boundary pollution with heavy metals... 

Prut River is a first-order tributary of the Danube River it is the last major tributary before the Danube enters its delta. The total length of the Prut River is 983 km. The uppermost 241 km are on Ukrainian territory, for the next 31 km the river forms the border between Romania and Ukraine, and for the lower 711 km it forms the border between Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The Prut River catchment is bordered in the South and West by the Siret catchment, situated on Romanian territory, and in the North and East by the Nistru catchment, situated on Ukrainian and Moldovan territory. 

Hydrology water system includes the Prut River with tributaries as well as freshwater... 

Figure 2. Monitoring sites along flie Prut River.

For sediments, except for a few single samples, the distribution of metals is rather uniform along the river. The tendency to higher values at site 6 and below as observed for the water data is not clearly evident in the sediments (Figure 4). These trends indicate that the Prut River sediment generally is not heavily polluted with the four heavy metals. 

Figure 3. Annual mean concentrations of elements in the Prut River in 2(X)1 (pg-L ).

Considering the contribution of atmospheric deposition to the metal pollution of Prut River two ways of supply are possible ... 

Over the stretch of Prut River the StSica Coste ti reservoir represents a major part of the total water surface (Figure 2a). Therefore the estimation was limited to the direct atmospheric contribution to the surface of this reservoir, which is about 60 km The values of heavy metal concentrations in Hypnum cupressiforme (mg-kg ) moss samples from Stefanesti (the site closed to the St ica reservoir) were selected. The yearly deposition values (mg m y ) were calculated. Assuming the mean depth of the reservoir to be 12.5 m, the total volume is of the order of 7,5x10 m. The annual atmospheric addition of metals to the reservoir were calculated from the estimated deposition rates. If diluted over the whole volume, and given that the residence time of water in the reservoir is about 4 month, the increments to the metal concentrations in water are estimated... 

The obtained values for atmospheric deposition in the Prut River catchment are lower than those obtained in Transilvania (Stan et al, 2001), similar to those obtained in the Eastern Carpathians and higher compared to the Republic Moldova (Figure 7). This supports the conclusion that no trans-boundary pollution of the investigated elements from Romania to the Republic of Moldova could be considered. 

Romania, Prut River catchment and Republic of Moldova. 

The total country water resources available for various purposes are estimated at 7,2 km3/year, including internal surface water resources (1,3 km3), the groundwater (1,1 km3) and the share of Moldova from transboundary rivers, Dniester river (2,5 km3) and the Prut river (0,8 km3) (Ropot, 2002). 

The Danube river is the main receiving water for the entire Romanian hydrological basin, and its water quality is related with the water quality of its tributaries. The results show greater levels of pesticides at Tumu Magurele and Tulcea, due to the ccxitribution of the Olt and Prut rivers. 

In the south of Moldova, the Karangatian epoch corresponds [8] to the lagoonal sediments of the second terrace of the Prut and Danube rivers they contain one or two layers with shells of Caspian didacnas separated by a layer of lacustrine deposits. 

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