Abstract
Abstract. Surface analytical methods are applied to examine the environmental status of seawaters. The present overview emphasizes advantages of combining surface analytical methods, applied to a hazardous situation in the Adriatic Sea, such as monitoring of the first aggregation phases of dissolved organic matter in order to potentially predict the massive mucilage formation and testing of oil spill cleanup. Such an approach, based on fast and direct characterization of organic matter and its high-resolution visualization, sets a continuous-scale description of organic matter from micro- to nanometre scales. Electrochemical method of chronoamperometry at the dropping mercury electrode meets the requirements for monitoring purposes due to the simple and fast analysis of a large number of natural seawater samples enabling simultaneous differentiation of organic constituents. In contrast, atomic force microscopy allows direct visualization of biotic and abiotic particles and provides an insight into structural organization of marine organic matter at micro- and nanometre scales. In the future, merging data at different spatial scales, taking into account experimental input on micrometre scale, observations on metre scale and modelling on kilometre scale, will be important for developing sophisticated technological platforms for knowledge transfer, reports and maps applicable for the marine environmental protection and management of the coastal area, especially for tourism, fishery and cruiser trafficking.
Highlights
Different human activities introducing substances and energy in marine environment can have serious environmental threats with wide ranging impacts and possibly long lasting consequences
We address the major challenges faced by the Adriatic Sea: risks and threats of oil pollution and mucilage formation, where eutrophication most probably contributes to the frequency of mucilage appearance (Fonda-Umani et al, 1989)
The monitoring study conducted in the northern Adriatic enabled investigation of the environmental status of seawaters based on the spatiotemporal distribution of organic matter
Summary
Different human activities introducing substances and energy in marine environment can have serious environmental threats with wide ranging impacts and possibly long lasting consequences. Development of particle counters (electronic, electrochemical), histological staining and sophisticated microscopical methods in the last decades helped establish new particle classes, predominantly non-living, which had remained undetected due to their small size, transparency and susceptibility to degradation (Žuticand Svetlicic, 2000) These particle classes have shown large abundance and reactivity, having a crucial role in aquatic environments, in the cycling of nutrients, aggregation of organic matter and the food web (Koike et al, 1990; Wells and Goldberg 1994; Long and Azam, 1996). Both development of methodological approaches and additional scientific understanding for assessing the environmental status of seawater are required The aim of this overview is to emphasize advantages of a combined methodological approach applied to investigating hazardous situations in the Adriatic Sea, such as monitoring the first aggregation phases of dissolved organic matter in order to potentially predict the massive mucilage formation and testing of oil spill cleanup. The advent of AFM introduced the possibility to directly explore these processes at a scale that determines the fate of organic matter and its interactions at the interfaces
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