Pollution of the North Sea by West European Rivers

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (10) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Hupkes
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
The North ◽  
Sources Of Pollution ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Pollution Loads ◽  
West European

The pollution loads of the major rivers flowing into the North Sea are calculated over the period of 1984 to 1987. The loads were calculated on the basis of data as provided by the measuring authorities concerned. For several substances the loads are compared with other sources of pollution. In general it can be stated that the reliability of the loads is rather low. Changes in the annual loads are seldom statistically significant over the period of four years. The highest concentrations are, in most of the cases, found in the river Scheldt. When loads are considered the Rhine and Elbe contribute the largest loads for most of the substances.

scholarly journals A synthetic map of the north-west European Shelf sedimentary environment for applications in marine science

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Wilson ◽  
Douglas C. Speirs ◽  
Alessandro Sabatino ◽  
Michael R. Heath
Keyword(s):  
Grain Size ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Sedimentary Environment ◽  
Marine Policy ◽  
Seabed Sediment ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
West European

Abstract. Seabed sediment mapping is important for a wide range of marine policy, planning and scientific issues, and there has been considerable national and international investment around the world in the collation and synthesis of sediment datasets. However, in Europe at least, much of this effort has been directed towards seabed classification and mapping of discrete habitats. Scientific users often have to resort to reverse engineering these classifications to recover continuous variables, such as mud content and median grain size, that are required for many ecological and biophysical studies. Here we present a new set of 0.125∘ by 0.125∘ resolution synthetic maps of continuous properties of the north-west European sedimentary environment, extending from the Bay of Biscay to the northern limits of the North Sea and the Faroe Islands. The maps are a blend of gridded survey data, statistically modelled values based on distributions of bed shear stress due to tidal currents and waves, and bathymetric properties. Recent work has shown that statistical models can predict sediment composition in British waters and the North Sea with high accuracy, and here we extend this to the entire shelf and to the mapping of other key seabed parameters. The maps include percentage compositions of mud, sand and gravel; porosity and permeability; median grain size of the whole sediment and of the sand and the gravel fractions; carbon and nitrogen content of sediments; percentage of seabed area covered by rock; mean and maximum depth-averaged tidal velocity and wave orbital velocity at the seabed; and mean monthly natural disturbance rates. A number of applications for these maps exist, including species distribution modelling and the more accurate representation of sea-floor biogeochemistry in ecosystem models. The data products are available from https://doi.org/10.15129/1e27b806-1eae-494d-83b5-a5f4792c46fc.

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