RESUMEN
Historical copper mine tailings deposited in the Repparfjord, Northern Norway, provided new insight into the biogeochemical impact of submarine tailings disposals on high-latitude coastal ecosystems. The submarine tailings disposal in the Repparfjord represents a product of mining activities between 1972 and 1979. Their environmental impact has been extensively studied during the last decade, but geochemistry of the sediment pore water, which is crucial to assess and monitor the in-situ metal leaching and bioavailability, has never been analysed. The actual impact on the benthic fauna remains poorly known. Therefore, this study couples the pore water chemistry and the foraminiferal analysis obtained from selected sediment cores (gravity core, multicore, box cores) to examine metal stability and the past and current status of the foraminifera community. We measured down-core sulfate and trace metal concentrations and Eh-Ph and applied the Shannon index, the AZTI's Marine Biotic Index (F-AMBI) index and the foraminiferal abnormality index. This study confirms the ongoing leaching of Cu from the underlying mine tailings and release across the sediment-water interface. Leaching of Ni, Zn and Pb have been attributed to weathering of natural bedrock lithologies. The original benthic foraminiferal community disappeared almost entirely during the disposal period, and now it is dominated by stress-tolerant and opportunistic species like Bulimina marginata and Spiroplectammina biformis. Anyhow, against previous assumptions, the community composition changed, while the overall diversity and abnormalities (FAI) shell formation is unaffected by elevated Cu concentrations.
RESUMEN
The association and statistical correlation of anthropogenically important trace metals (TM) Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn and degraded marine microplastic (MP) extracted from the bulk debris samples at two locations from two marine systems, estuarine and coastal, in the Croatian Adriatic coastal area were assessed. The abundance of MP particles at both sites were primarily defined by local wave climate, with the open coastal site containing 9-fold more microplastic particles (>4 mm) as compared to the semi-closed estuarine, or twice as much considering bulk plastics. Generally, the higher abundance of adsorbed metal on MP were observed in the more anthropogenically influenced estuary than in the open coastal site and followed the order: polystyrene > polypropylene > low density polyethylene. The amounts of adsorbed zinc were the highest on all types of plastics at both sites, while the affinity of polystyrene for metals followed: Zn > Pb ≈ Cu > Cd.