Elsevier

Earth-Science Reviews

Volume 162, November 2016, Pages 1-23
Earth-Science Reviews

Invited review
Fingerprinting and tracing the sources of soils and sediments: Earth and ocean science, geoarchaeological, forensic, and human health applications

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.08.012Get rights and content

Abstract

Fine-grained sediment is perhaps the most widespread and pervasive contaminant in aquatic systems reflecting its role in influencing the quality of the water (e.g., turbidity, vector of chemicals and other pollutants) and its detrimental effect on infrastructure (e.g., dams, turbines) and aquatic habitats (e.g., salmonid spawning grounds) through sedimentation. Determining the sources of fine-grained sediment thus represents an important requirement for watershed and coastal management, as well as for understanding the evolution of landscapes and ocean basins. Sediment source fingerprinting utilizes the diagnostic physical, chemical and biological properties (i.e., tracers) of source materials to enable samples of collected sediment to be apportioned to these sources. This review examines the development of the technique within the earth and ocean sciences, focusing mainly on agricultural landscapes. However, the development of new tracers, such as compound-specific stable isotopes, has allowed the technique to be applied in a growing number of environmental settings including forested (including wildfire-impacted forests), urban and estuarine/coastal settings. This review also describes other applications of the fingerprinting approach such as geoarchaeological (e.g., archaeological site formation), forensic (e.g., identifying the sources of soil/sediment particles in criminal investigations) and human health (e.g., identifying the sources of airborne particulate matter, PM2.5) applications. Identifying commonalities in methods and approaches between environments and disciplines should foster collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Furthermore, refinement of the sediment source fingerprinting technique requires that several methodological issues be addressed. These methodological issues range from the initial sampling design to the interpretation of the final apportionment results. This review also identifies and assesses these methodological concerns.

Section snippets

Background and history

In recent decades, there has been a rapid growth in the number of studies that have utilized tracing and fingerprinting approaches to investigate the movement of soils and fine sediments in terrestrial and aquatic systems (Koiter et al., 2013a, Walling, 2013, Mabit et al., 2014). This growth is due to the fact that these techniques are able to provide essential information on soil and sediment dynamics that can be used to understand the evolution of landscapes (e.g., Belmont et al., 2007) and

The sediment source fingerprinting approach

There are numerous soil and sediment properties that can be used to discriminate between the potential sources of the sediment within a river basin or coastal/oceanic environment. This section provides a brief overview of these properties; for comprehensive reviews see Foster and Lees (2000), Collins and Walling (2004), Guzmán et al. (2013) and Haddadchi et al. (2013). Many of the main fingerprinting properties are shown in Fig. 1 and include physical characteristics (e.g., sediment size,

Agricultural landscapes

To date, the majority of sediment source fingerprinting studies have been undertaken in agricultural landscapes reflecting the widespread occurrence of agriculture and also concerns associated with soil erosion and off-site effects. Typically, studies have aimed to quantify the relative contribution of agricultural fields to the total sediment budget and to compare such contributions to the sediment delivered from other areas of the basin (e.g., forests, river banks, road ditches, urban areas).

Archaeological and geoarchaeological applications

There is a long tradition of geological “provenance” or source fingerprinting research in archaeology and geoarchaeology. Two broad areas of research activity may be identified. The first is aimed at better understanding cultural processes of raw material exploitation and use, while the second involves a suite of geological and anthropogenic processes associated with the creation of the archaeological record. They may be summarized as studies investigating the procurement of sedimentary

Forensic applications

Soil forensics is similar to sediment source fingerprinting as it utilizes the physical and biogoechemical properties of soils (i.e., fingerprints) as trace evidence (Ruffell, 2010). There is typically a two-way exchange of trace evidence (e.g., soil or sediment) when subjects and objects come into contact with each other. This is where soil forensics can establish or refute a link between people and objects and a particular location of interest using soils as trace evidence. Table 5 shows the

Human health applications: fingerprinting airborne particles

Soils and sediments, and the contaminants associated with them, can be a risk to human health (Abrahams, 2002). The main pathways by which soils and sediments and associated contaminants enter humans are: direct ingestion; inhalation through the nose and mouth; and adsorption through the skin. Consequently, there has been an interest in determining the origin of soils and sediments known to be a risk to human health. One such application is the identification of the sources of very fine

Methodological considerations and recommendations

While there has been a rapid growth in studies undertaking sediment source fingerprinting in a range of environments and applications, there are still aspects of the approach that warrant further improvement in order to increase its robustness and acceptability. The following sections consider some of these needs; further considerations and background can be found in Walling (2013) and Smith et al. (2015).

Conclusion and perspective

Sediment source fingerprinting has emerged within the last few decades as an important tool that can be used for a range of applications, including those in earth and ocean sciences, (geo)archaeology, forensics and human health. While applications in forensic and health sciences may have longer histories, there has been a dramatic increase within Earth sciences, particularly since the 1990s, reflecting the fact that the approach is able to provide useful information on landscape and watershed

Acknowledgements

This review was initiated as part of a project on developing improved protocols for sediment fingerprinting in Canadian watersheds funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (STPGP 413426-2011). Additional ideas stem from several sessions on sediment source tracing and fingerprinting at the European Geosciences Union conferences, a Coordinated Research Project of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and from a workshop held at the Scripps Institute, University

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