Historical Fluxes of Pollutants from Deconvolution of Sedimentary Records

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Sedimentary records of particle.associated pollutants contain valuable informatin on the history of pollution. However, these records are often distorted reflections of past fluxes because of a variety of processes in the sediments such as mixing, biodegradation (organics), radioactive decay (radionuclides), and compaction. This project is aimed at further development of methods for recovery of the historical input record of pollutants from the sedimentary profile. Conveyor.belt transfer, molecular diffusion, and biodegradation of pollutants will be considered, when appropriate. The time domain deconvolution method will be further investigated with regard to uniqueness, optimal choice of time and space intervals, and error measures for deconvolved records. It is also planned to examine an alternative deconvolution method based on inversion in the frequency domain. The developed methods will be applied to literature data and to experimental data for cores from Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Pollutants of interest include lead, zinc, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.