A large number of micropollutants, also known as trace contaminants or emerging contaminants, and their transformation products (veterinary and human pharmaceuticals, pesticides and biocides, personal care products, organic pollutants such as PFAS or chlorinated compounds) and heavy metals pose a risk for soil, groundwater and surface water. The large diversity of compounds and of their sources makes the quantification of their occurrence in the terrestrial and aquatic environment across space and time a challenging task. Regulatory monitoring programs cover a small selection out of the compound diversity and quantify these selected compounds only at coarse temporal and spatial resolution. Carefully designed monitoring, however, allows to detect and elucidate processes and to estimate parameters in the aquatic environment. Modelling is a complementary tool to generalize measured data and extrapolate in time and space, which is needed as a basis for scenario analysis and decision making. Mitigation measures can help reduce contamination of groundwater and surface water and impacts on water quality and aquatic ecosystems.
This session invites contributions that improve our quantitative understanding of the sources and pathways, mass fluxes, the fate and transport and the mitigation of micropollutants in the soil-groundwater-river continuum of catchments.
Topics cover:
- Novel sampling and monitoring concepts and devices
- New analytical methods such as new detection methods for micropollutants, non-target screening
- Experimental studies to improve process understanding and to quantify diffuse and point source inputs
- Biogeochemical interactions and impact on micropollutant behaviour
- Fate studies on parent compounds and transformation products
- Modelling approaches (including hydrology and sediment transport) to simulate pollutant transport and fate at several spatial and temporal scales
- Spatial and temporal monitoring to elucidate transport processes and to support modelling
- Modelling tools for decision support
- Setup of mitigation measures and evaluating their effectiveness.
- Methods to evaluate water quality modelling uncertainty, and/or combining data and modeling (data assimilation)