Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river

Sediment quality receives little concern in aquatic monitoring programs due to its expensive analytical procedures. However, sediment contaminations can influence the overall quality of aquatic environment. Sediment provides habitats to benthic organisms, which some of them are the food sources to h...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Tan, Siew Ling
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English
Published:	2007
Subjects:	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General)
Online Access:	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/1/TanSiewLingMFKA2007.pdf
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

id	my-utm-ep.6215
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-utm-ep.62152018-08-26T04:45:18Z Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river 2007-07 Tan, Siew Ling TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) Sediment quality receives little concern in aquatic monitoring programs due to its expensive analytical procedures. However, sediment contaminations can influence the overall quality of aquatic environment. Sediment provides habitats to benthic organisms, which some of them are the food sources to human. Due to the acidic condition in digestion track, sediment contaminants can become soluble to the organisms and lead to the occurrence of bioaccumulations. It also serves as diffuse sources of contamination to the overlying water body; slowly releasing the contaminant back into the water column (Marcus, 1991). Therefore, ensuring a good sediment quality is crucial to maintain a healthy aquatic ecosystem, which ensuring good protection of human health and aquatic life. The aim of this study was to analyse and assess the riverbed sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river. Sungai Linggi river basin at Negeri Sembilan had been chosen as the study area because of the multiple developments (commercial, indrustrial, agricultural etc.) within its basin boundary. Metals (Cd, Cr, Co, Fe, Pb, Mn, Hg, Zn, As and Al), nutrients (TKN and TP) and carbon content (loss of ignition) were selected to be the analysis parameters. The result was then being compared with the effect levels in published SQGs. In addition, sediment enrichment factors (SEFs) were calculated to assess the metal contaminants in collected sediment samples with relative to the Al content. SQGs and SEFs provided different conclusions of the major contaminants in the sediment samples. The SQGs approach indicated Hg and As were two major contaminants in this basin because many samples exceeded the severe effect level (SEL) (Hg = 80%; As = 26%). Conversely, Zn and As were the critical contaminants signified by SEFs approach. Percentages of samples with SEFs more than 2 for Zn and As were 56.52% and 43.48% respectively. These differences were expected because using SQGs in sediment quality assessment can be subjective due to the origin of SQGs; while SEFs provide more tailored approach because they were calculated based on the background concentrations of each sample. 2007-07 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/ http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/1/TanSiewLingMFKA2007.pdf application/pdf en public http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:62091 masters Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Civil Engineering Faculty of Civil Engineering
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
language	English
topic	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General)
spellingShingle	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General) Tan, Siew Ling Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
description	Sediment quality receives little concern in aquatic monitoring programs due to its expensive analytical procedures. However, sediment contaminations can influence the overall quality of aquatic environment. Sediment provides habitats to benthic organisms, which some of them are the food sources to human. Due to the acidic condition in digestion track, sediment contaminants can become soluble to the organisms and lead to the occurrence of bioaccumulations. It also serves as diffuse sources of contamination to the overlying water body; slowly releasing the contaminant back into the water column (Marcus, 1991). Therefore, ensuring a good sediment quality is crucial to maintain a healthy aquatic ecosystem, which ensuring good protection of human health and aquatic life. The aim of this study was to analyse and assess the riverbed sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river. Sungai Linggi river basin at Negeri Sembilan had been chosen as the study area because of the multiple developments (commercial, indrustrial, agricultural etc.) within its basin boundary. Metals (Cd, Cr, Co, Fe, Pb, Mn, Hg, Zn, As and Al), nutrients (TKN and TP) and carbon content (loss of ignition) were selected to be the analysis parameters. The result was then being compared with the effect levels in published SQGs. In addition, sediment enrichment factors (SEFs) were calculated to assess the metal contaminants in collected sediment samples with relative to the Al content. SQGs and SEFs provided different conclusions of the major contaminants in the sediment samples. The SQGs approach indicated Hg and As were two major contaminants in this basin because many samples exceeded the severe effect level (SEL) (Hg = 80%; As = 26%). Conversely, Zn and As were the critical contaminants signified by SEFs approach. Percentages of samples with SEFs more than 2 for Zn and As were 56.52% and 43.48% respectively. These differences were expected because using SQGs in sediment quality assessment can be subjective due to the origin of SQGs; while SEFs provide more tailored approach because they were calculated based on the background concentrations of each sample.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Master's degree
author	Tan, Siew Ling
author_facet	Tan, Siew Ling
author_sort	Tan, Siew Ling
title	Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
title_short	Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
title_full	Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
title_fullStr	Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
title_full_unstemmed	Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river
title_sort	analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical malaysian river
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Civil Engineering
granting_department	Faculty of Civil Engineering
publishDate	2007
url	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/1/TanSiewLingMFKA2007.pdf
_version_	1747814640727883776

Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river

Similar Items