Impacts of airborne contamination on regional soil and water quality: The Kola Peninsula, Russia

Regional geochemical mapping of 188 000 km(2) in the European Arctic demons trates that long-range atmospheric transport of heavy metal pollution from industrial emitters on the Kola Peninsula (nickel smelters, roasting plant, and refinery at Nikel, Zapoljarnij, and Monchegorsk, Russia) currently doe s not seem to present a major:environmental threat an a regional scale, wit h the majority of heavy metal emissions being deposited as particulates nea r the sources. Furthermore, no regional impact of acid rain can, as yet, be observed in the distributions of pH, alkalinity, and sulfur in humus, mine ral soils, or lake water. Large-scale natural phenomena (e.g., displacement of protons from the organic soil layer by input of marine cations) appear to be more important for the regional distribution of pH in humus and surfa ce waters than input of sulfur (acid rain). The importance of documenting a nd understanding the regional significance and scale of geochemical process es before initiating environmental monitoring or detailed investigations on a very local (e.g., catchment) scale is underlined by these results. Emiss ion of basic particles from industry seems to counteract to a large extent environmental acidification, and this should be taken into account when dev ising emission control procedures.