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Concentrations and sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediment cores of southern continental shelf of Kaoping submarine canyon

This study investigated distributions and the concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the sediment cores in southern continental shelf of Kao-Ping submarine canyon. The sediment cores collected were analyzed for PAHs to reconstruct historical record of PAH contamination and to find out the possible sources, trends and fluxes.
The findings demonstrated the average concentrations of PAHs in the northern continental shelf of Kao-Ping submarine canyon were higher than in the southern continental shelf. The average concentrations of £U51 PAHs and £U16 PAHs ranged from 578 to 697 and from 132 to 173 ng/g , respectively. Because particle sedimentation rates and PAH sources were different along cores, vertical distributions of PAH concentrations among cores were not the same. Identification by diagnostic ratios and result of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) suggesting PAHs in the core of northern continental shelf were from pyrogenic and petrogenic sources, while those in the cores of southern continental shelf were from petrogenic source. Compared with sediment quality guidelines (SQGs), most of the sample sediment cores are below the outlined criteria. Only the PAH concentrations of the sediments between 2-16 cm in the core L27 were higher than the Threshold Effect Level (TEL) value. Total PAH concentrations in this study were lower than those from other coastal areas in literature.
According to the PAH concentrations along cores in the southern
continental shelf, significant increase of total PAH concentrations was evident in the early 1900s. Our results also demonstrate that PAH concentrations and sources in the southern continental shelf area related to the increasing industrial activities in Kao-Ping coastal area.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0730107-182504
Date30 July 2007
CreatorsLi, Kun-je
ContributorsChung-pan Lee, Chon-lin Lee, S.K. Lin, James T Liu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0730107-182504
Rightsoff_campus_withheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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