Cover Image

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
http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/
http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:62091
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
id my.utm.6215
record_format eprints
spelling my.utm.62152018-08-26T04:45:18Z http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/ Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river 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 NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/1/TanSiewLingMFKA2007.pdf Tan, Siew Ling (2007) Analysis and assessment of sediment quality in a typical Malaysian river. Masters thesis, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Civil Engineering. http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:62091
institution Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
building UTM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
content_source UTM Institutional Repository
url_provider http://eprints.utm.my/
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
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
publishDate 2007
url http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/1/TanSiewLingMFKA2007.pdf
http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/6215/
http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:62091
_version_ 1643644504666800128
score 13.211869

Similar Items