FINGERPRINTS APPROACH TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF ANTHROPOGENIC TRACE-METAL SOURCES IN THE NEARSHORE AND ESTUARINE ENVIRONMENTS

The problem of source identification of anthropogenic pollutants in a local marine environment has been intensively studied during the last two decades. Recently we have started intensively using an approach, c alled by us the ''fingerprints'' approach, for tracing anthropogenic p ollutant sources and for the description of various geochemical and ch emical processes related to contamination by anthropogenic heavy metal s in the marine environment. This approach was based on the assumption that if anthropogenic pollutants for any particular area had originat ed from the same source, then the pairwise relationships between the c oncentrations of these pollutants in sediments from various stations i n the contaminated area would be linear. The discussed approach was ap plied to the case study of heavy metal contamination of the estuarine environment of the Kishon River (Israel). The ''fingerprints'' approac h can be successfully used for source contamination assessments even w hen there is significant trace metal fractionation or sediment fractio nation in an area under study. However, in these cases this approach s hould be applied to each sediment fraction separately. The distributio n of various heavy metal ''fingerprints'' for sediments from the case study of the Kishon River estuary and from the marine area close to th e estuary have been used for the explanation of heavy metal redistribu tion on Kishon sediments consisting of a high fraction of anthropogeni c fluorite after the contact of these sediments with seawater.