Development of Guidelines for Environmental and Geochemical Assessment of Marine Bottom Sediments in Peter the Great Gulf

Abstract

The current system of assessment of bottom sediments quality in the Russian Federation is based on overseas standards and/or reference concentrations of pollutants. The use of foreign standards contradicts the legislation of the Russian Federation, and the use of reference concentrations leads to ambiguity of estimates due to the heterogeneity of bottom sediments and natural variability of the content of controlled substances. This paper presents the analysis of existing approaches to assessing pollution of bottom sediments, and the results of theoretical and experimental research, calculations, assessing pollution of bottom sediments of the Zolotoy Rog Bay in Peter the Great Gulf. The necessity for adoption and capture in a regulatory document of regional background concentrations of pollutants in bottom sediments is shown. Guidelines are proposed for environmental assessment of the pollution level of bottom sediments in Peter the Great Gulf, based on the use of integral characteristics and criteria for assessing the degree of pollution of bottom sediments depending on the type of use of the water area.