Surveillance monitoring sediments

A large number of sediment analyses, which have been performed for the inventory, monitoring and surveillance of pollution in aquatic systems have clearly shown that it is imperative, particularly for river sediments, to base these data on a standardized procedure with regard to particle size. With a typical example, taken from the study of Wilber Hunter (1979) on metal pollution in the Saddle River, the situation can be demonstrated. Figure 3-3 compares the dependencies of zinc concentrations from the grain size in two selected samples taken upstream and downstream of an urbanized area of Lodi, New Jersey. In the less contaminated material from rive mile 16.6 a general decrease of zinc concen-... 

In contrast to the strong temporal and spatial variability in the aqueous concentrations of contaminants, sediments integrate contaminant concentrations over time, and can, therefore, reduce the number of samples in monitoring, surveillance and survey activities ... 

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