Influence of anthropogenic activity to the macronutrient loading in water and soil – Case study of industrial area

Abstract

Mining activities, in combination with accelerated urbanization growth and climate change, constitutes a major challenge for creating a sustainable development. Thus, the monitoring and assessment of mining effect is mandatory in understanding the impact on the primary physico-chemical characteristics of an environment. In this context, the paper presents the evolution of micro- and macro- nutrients in water, soil and sediment from two industrial areas from Romania (Copșa Mică industrial platform and Baia Sprie mining zone), in order to assess the impact of pollutants on ecosystems. Physico-chemical (pH, NH4+, NO3-, NO2-, TN, TP), base cations (Ca, Mg, Na and K) and micronutrients (Fe, Mn and Zn) have been analyzed in order to evaluate the quality of the environment. For some of the analyzed soils, the concentration of Zn, Mn and Fe exceeded the maximum permissible limits (MPL) imposed by the Romanian legislation, falling within the limit for Alert Thresholds for less sensitive soils. The correlation analysis on water quality parameters revealed that all parameters are more or less correlated with each other Person’s Correlation matrix. Overall, our results demonstrated that the knowledge of the physico-chemical regime of an environment is of great value in the determination of its productivity, usefulness and other characteristics which can facilitate further vegetation restoration and reconstruction and a sustainable development of the ecological environment in a polluted area.