Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Impact Of Nitrogen Contamination And River Modification On A Mississippi River Floodplain Lake, Indu Karthic, Richard B. Brugam Ph.D., William A. Retzlaff, Kevin Johnson

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Anthropogenic nitrogen contamination has increased in ecosystems around the world (frequently termed the “nitrogen cascade”). Coke production for steel manufacturing is often overlooked as a source of nitrogen to natural ecosystems. We examined sediment cores from a Horseshoe Lake, a floodplain lake located just East of St. Louis Missouri (USA) to test whether a coking plant effluent could be traced using stable isotopes of nitrogen and diatom microfossils. The distribution of δ¹⁵N values in surface sediment samples from the lake shows the highest values near the coking plant effluent. Analysis stable isotopes of nitrogen from sediment cores using …