EGU21-15883, updated on 16 Jan 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15883
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Historical record and sources of contaminants in sediments from Mar Menor coastal lagoon.

Irene Alorda-Montiel1, Júlia Rodríguez-Puig1, Aaron Alorda-Kleinglass2, Marc Diego-Feliu2, Valentí Rodellas2, and Jordi Garcia-Orellana1,2
Irene Alorda-Montiel et al.
  • 1Departament de Física, UAB, Bellaterra, E-08193, Spain
  • 2Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, UAB, Bellaterra, E-08193, Spain

Mar Menor (SE, Spain) is one of the largest coastal lagoons in the Mediterranean basin. Its ecological and economic significance has led to its inclusion in several protection programmes, both on a national and international level. In the last decades, this semiconfined habitat has been under high anthropogenic pressure from agricultural, mining and tourism activities, which have resulted in significant changes, such as eutrophic events and their cascading ecological effects. Previous research suggests that this degradation is linked to the introduction of nutrients and contaminants to this ecosystem, which are accumulated in the sediments of the lagoon. In this work, sediment cores from key locations of the Mar Menor were collected in order to estimate the amount of accumulated chemical compounds, such as metals and organic compounds. The results of this study are used to reconstruct the historical record of contaminants, which can fuel future contamination episodes in the lagoon.  

  

How to cite: Alorda-Montiel, I., Rodríguez-Puig, J., Alorda-Kleinglass, A., Diego-Feliu, M., Rodellas, V., and Garcia-Orellana, J.: Historical record and sources of contaminants in sediments from Mar Menor coastal lagoon., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15883, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15883, 2021.

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