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Characterization of Nanming River (southwestern China) sewerage-impacted pollution using an excitation-emission matrix and PARAFAC

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Abstract

Nanming River, the largest urban river in Guizhou Province, southwestern China plateau, has been severely polluted for decades. This study characterizes the organic materials and their sources in the upstream and downstream waters by dissolved organic carbon (DOC), excitation emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy, parallel factor (PARAFAC) analysis and photo-microbial experiments. DOC concentrations were low (47–120 μM C) upstream and relatively high (146–462 μM C) downstream. The PARAFAC studies on the sample EEM spectra demonstrated that the upstream dissolved organic matter (DOM) was mostly composed of one component that had a fulvic acid-like substance; downstream DOM was composed of two components with mixtures of tryptophan-like and fulvic acid-like substances. From the results of the sewerage drainage samples collected along the bank of the river, it is evident that both household detergent-like and protein-like or tryptophan-like substances are predominantly present, indicating that untreated sewerage effluents are the major sources of organic matter pollution in Nanming River. The degradation experiments conducted on river, sewerage drainage and commercial detergent samples demonstrated that the detergent-like and tryptophan-like substances are both photochemically and microbiologically more decomposable than fulvic acid-like materials under sunlight and dark incubations. These results suggest that the input of the untreated sewerage effluents along the streams is the major pollution source in Nanming River, and the fluorescent DOM was efficiently affected by both photochemical and microbial processes.

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Acknowledgments

This work was jointly funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (2008CB418200) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (1314765, U0833603, 40632011). We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and thoughtful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 550002, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China

    Khan M. G. Mostofa, Cong-Qiang Liu, Wang L. Fang, Wang L. Ying, Li Wen & Mei Yi

  2. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Lake Pollution Control, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, People’s Republic of China

    Fengchang Wu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Ore Deposit Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 550002, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Yuan

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  1. Khan M. G. Mostofa
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Correspondence to Khan M. G. Mostofa.

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Mostofa, K.M.G., Wu, F., Liu, CQ. et al. Characterization of Nanming River (southwestern China) sewerage-impacted pollution using an excitation-emission matrix and PARAFAC. Limnology 11, 217–231 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-009-0306-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-009-0306-4

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