MONITORING OF HEAVY METALS IN THE SEDIMENTS OF THE INAOUENE RIVER, MOROCCO

Monitoring of heavy metals in the sediments of the Inaouene River, Morocco

Jamal Naoura, Lahcen Benaabidate

Laboratory of Georesources and Environment, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, USMBA, MOROCCO

Abstract

The watercourse of the Inaouène River carries all the solid waste disposals from the urban areas (City of Taza, Bab marzouka, oued Amlil, Bouhlou). It also receives wastewater which is not treated at the sources. This wastewater contains various types of heavy metals. The study of heavy metal contents in the sediments was carried out at 11 sampling sites alongside the Inaouène River and some of its principal tributaries in May 2008 and October 2009. The results can be classified into three series: the series 1: including the metals (Fe, Sr, Mn, Zn, Rb, Pb) detected on all the sampled sites, the series 2: including the metals (Cu, Ni, Cr, As, Co, Pt, Sn) detected only some sites, the series 3: including hazardous metals (Ag, Cd, Hg) which were under the limit of detection. The correlation analyses of heavy metal contents of two study periods indicated that a large part of examined heavy metals had common sources and behaved similarly during the transportation.

Keywords: Sediments, heavy metals, pollution, Inaouene River

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