In-situ transport and fate of contaminants

Persistent organic pollutants and metals have complex pathways within the aquatic systems. Fugacity/aquivalencefate and transport modelscan be developed to synthesize our knowledge and provide effective management tools to be used in conjunction with field and observational data. sediments are a key component in aquatic systems because they are the final repository of all material mobilized on land. furthermore, accreeting sediments can keep a record of environmental conditions at the time of particle deposition and accumulation. Sediment contamination can be studied with a number of different approaches, each providing a different piece of information. in this article we describe the principles of environmental modelling and the main phases of the study of contaminated sediments: i) pollutant distribution, source location and identification, and level of threat to the environment; ii) accumulation of chemicals in sediments, history, trends and requirements for dredging operations; iii) monitoring.