47 Origin and Evolution of the Appalachian Critical Zone. II. Anthropogenic Sediments and Their Impacts on Aquatic Ecosystems

Monday, 24 March 2014
1:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Commonwealth Salons 1-2

COAL-TAR-BASED SEALCOATED PAVEMENT: A MAJOR PAH SOURCE TO URBAN STREAM SEDIMENTS

Paper number: 47-6
Program: Symposia Sessions
Time: 2:55 PM – 3:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

We used land-use analysis, PAH fingerprinting, and multivariate statistics to identify sediment PAH sources in a small (~1303 km2) urbanizing watershed located in South-Central Pennsylvania. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to quantify land-use features that may serve as PAH sources. Urban PAH concentrations were three times higher than rural levels, and were significantly and highly correlated with combined residential/commercial/industrial land use. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to group sediments with similar PAH assemblages, and correlation analysis compared PAH sediment assemblages to common PAH sources. The strongest correlations were observed between rural sediments (n = 7) and coke-oven emission sources (n = 5), and between urban sediments (n = 22) and coal-tar-based sealcoat dust ( n = 47), suggesting that coal-tar based sealcoat is an important PAH source linked to residential and commercial land-use.