Abstract
The Pietra del Pertusillo freshwater reservoir is a major artificial lake of environmental, biological, and ecological importance located in the Basilicata region, southern Italy. The reservoir arch-gravity dam was completed in 1963 for producing hydroelectric energy and providing water for human use, and nearby there are potential sources of anthropogenic pollution such as urban and industrial activities. For the first time, the minero-chemistry of the lake and fluvio-lacustrine sediments of the reservoir have been evaluated to assess the environmental quality. Moreover, the composition of fluvial sediments derived from the peri-lacual zone of the reservoir and of local outcropping bedrock were also studied to understand the factors affecting the behavior of elements in the freshwater reservoir, with particular attention paid to heavy metals. In Italy, specific regulatory values concerning the element threshold concentration for lake and river sediments do not exist, and for this reason, soil threshold values are considered the standard for sediments of internal waters. The evaluation of the environmental quality of reservoir sediments has been performed using enrichment factors obtained with respect to the average composition of a reconstructed local upper continental crust. We suggest this method as an innovative standard in similar conditions worldwide. In the studied reservoir sediments, the trace elements that may be of some environmental concern are Cr, Cu, Zn, As, and Pb although, at this stage, the distribution of these elements appears to be mostly driven by geogenic processes. However, within the frame of the assessment and the preservation of the quality of aquatic environments, particular attention has to be paid to As (which shows median value of 10 ppm, reaching a maximum value of 26 ppm in Quaternary sediments), constantly enriched in the lacustrine samples and especially in the fine-grained fraction (median = 8.5 ppm).
Highlights
Freshwater reservoirs role great importance for investigating pollution as they are generally located close to the urban and Responsible Editor: Philippe GarriguesEnviron Sci Pollut Res (2021) 28:4857–4878 and define their possible origin (Islam et al 2015)
The High Agri Valley is a Quaternary NW–SE intermontane basin located in the axial zone of the Southern Apennines mountain belt, an east-verging fold-and-thrust belt developed as an accretionary wedge from the late Oligocene to the early Pleistocene, due to the eastward migration of the Apenninic arc (Fig. 1) (e.g., Giano 2011; Giocoli et al 2015; Gueguen et al 2015)
It has been observed that to define more accurately the quality of sediments potentially affected by heavy metals and pollutants, a correct option could be an intensive comparison of applied sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) (Burton 2018; Birch 2018; Liu et al 2019; Jones et al 2019)
Summary
Freshwater reservoirs role great importance for investigating pollution as they are generally located close to the urban and Responsible Editor: Philippe GarriguesEnviron Sci Pollut Res (2021) 28:4857–4878 and define their possible origin (Islam et al 2015). Heavy and critical metals are among the most common environmental pollutants stressing the biotic community and are released into the environment by the weathering of rocks (e.g., Mongelli et al 2014a) or by human activities, such as mining, industrial and domestic effluents, and combustion of fossil fuels They may be transported by channelized flows (such as rivers and streams), or by atmospheric dust and accumulate in natural depressed areas (lakes, seas, and oceans). Heavy metals can be dissolved into solutions as free-ions for a short time; they, commonly are suspended as colloids by adsorption onto inorganic compounds (such as iron-manganese oxides and hydroxides and clay minerals) and organic matter (the most reactive phases in aquatic environments) or precipitated with oxides and carbonates (De Vivo et al 2004; Ammar et al 2015) For this reason, concentration of heavy metals might serve as useful indicators for the appropriate assessment of sediment contamination
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