Concentrations and fluxes of suspended particulate matter and associated contaminants in the Rhône River from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean Sea

[摘要] The Rhône River is among the main rivers of western Europe and thebiggest by freshwater discharge and sediment delivery to the MediterraneanSea. Its catchment is characterized by distinct hydrological regimes thatmay produce annual sediment deliveries ranging from 1.4 to18.0 Mt yr −1 .Its course meets numerous dams, hydro and nuclear power plants as well asagricultural, urban and industrial areas. Moreover, with the climatic crisiswe are currently facing, it is proven that the occurrence and the intensityof extreme events (floods or droughts) will increase. Therefore, it iscrucial to monitor the concentrations and fluxes of suspended particulatematter (SPM) and associated contaminants to study the current trends andtheir evolution. In the Rhône River (from Lake Geneva to theMediterranean Sea), a monitoring network of 15 stations (3 on theRhône River and 12 on tributaries) has been set up in the past decade bythe Rhône Sediment Observatory (OSR) to investigate the concentrationsand the fluxes of SPM and associated contaminants as well as their sources.The main purpose of the OSR is to assess the long-term trend of themain contaminant concentrations and fluxes, and to understand their behaviorduring extreme events, such as floods or dam flushing operations. The datasetpresented in this paper contains the concentrations and fluxes of SPM aswell as the concentrations and fluxes of several particle-bound contaminantsof concern, e.g., polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), trace metal elements (TME) and radionuclides, the particle size distribution and theparticulate organic carbon of SPM. Sediment traps or continuous flowcentrifuges were used to collect sufficient amount of SPM in order toconduct the measurements, and data completion was applied to reconstructmissing values. This observatory is on-going since 2011 and the database isregularly updated. All the data are made publicly available in French andEnglish through the BDOH OSR database at https://doi.org/10.15454/RJCQZ7 (Lepage et al., 2021).

[学科分类] 眼科学