MP1 New Approaches to Determining Soil and Sediment Exposures
256 Portland Ballroom
1:20 PM - 4:40 PM, Monday
() Distribution of soil bioavailability parameters throughout Europe and development of metalloregions.
Smith, C1, Stubblefield, W1, Clark, J1, Fairbrother, A1, Allen, H2, Schoeters, I3, Dwyer, R4, 1 Parametrix, Inc., Corvallis, OR, USA2 University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA3 European Copper Institute, Brussels, Belgium4 International Copper Association, New York, NY, USA
ABSTRACT- As part of an effort to develop a predictive model of bioavailability and toxicity of copper to terrestrial organisms (terrestrial Biotic Ligand Model - t-BLM), 19 soil samples from 9 European countries were collected in 2002 and analyzed for parameters important in controlling bioavailability. Although these samples were found to have a wide range of values for each parameter, it was unknown if they were fully representative of the soil types found throughout Europe. Therefore, the first objective of this research was to determine if the soils collected in 2002 were inclusive of the natural range of European soil bioavailability parameters, as was required for the development of a valuable regional model. To fulfill this objective, spatially explicit data describing European soil bioavailability parameters were obtained, and the statistical distributions of each parameter were defined by calculating the cumulative density functions, and the median, 90th and 10th percentiles. The distributions of the European soil bioavailability parameters were then compared to the range of soils collected in 2002. In general, the sampled soils were in close agreement with the natural distributions of several soil parameters, suggesting that the soils collected in 2002 were, in fact, representative of the natural range of European soil conditions and were appropriate for use in model development. The second objective of this research was to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the t-BLM to identify European "metalloregions" or areas with common levels of metals concentrations and associated bioavailability factors that concomitantly contribute to soil ecotoxicology. Kriging analyses were conducted using the extant discrete data, and a continuous surface for each model parameter was produced. The model was then solved, using data from the kriging analyses, to generate a continuous surface of toxicity values and identify potential risk regions.
Key words: Biotic Ligand Model