Comparison of Gravity and Vibro Corer for Acquisition of Environmental Data in Highly Impacted Areas. The Case of Augusta Harbor (Eastern Sicily, Italy)
Elena Romano, Luisa Bergamin, Maria Celia Magno, Antonella Ausili
Abstract:
Sediment cores may be used to reconstruct the chronological evolution of contamination in impacted areas and deep core levels may be used as reference conditions for the assessment of environmental status. For this, it is necessary to collect undisturbed cores, in which textural and chemical characteristics of each analyzed sediment layers correspond to the environmental conditions of the deposition times. Several devices are available and, among these, vibro and gravity corers are the most used ones. In this study, chemical (Ba, Hg, PCBs and PAHs) and grain size data obtained by means of gravity (SW-104) and vibro (Rossfelder®) corer from 3 stations of the heavily contaminated Augusta harbor were considered. They were compared considering the different technical characteristics of the corers, in order to demonstrate which is the difference for the data acquisition in terms of penetration depth. The results show that, for areas characterized by high sedimentation rates, the vibrocorer results the best choice for the higher penetration capacity. As regards sediment compaction and potential downward drag of any contaminants, the two devices do not show significant differences.
Download:
IMEKO-TC19-METROSEA-2017-39.pdf
DOI:
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Event details
IMEKO TC:
TC19
Event name:
1st IMEKO TC19 Workshop on Metrology for the Sea
Title:

"Learning to measure sea health parameters", Special session “Metrology traceability for oceanic parameters” together with TC8 and TC12

Place:
Naples, ITALY
Time:
11 October 2017 - 13 October 2017
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