Trace Elements in Lake Baikal: Current Status, Forecast and Monitoring Problems

摘要

Assessment of the current status of Lake Baikal proved to be based on changes in natural (“preindustrial”) chemical content in basic abiotic and biological compartments of the Lake geosystem. This approach was used to evaluate background “base-line levels” of 6 major and about 50 minor and trace ele-ments in the Lake Baikal water body using a number of most reliable data re-ported within 1992-2012. In terms of environment geochemistry Baikal is one of the purest water reservoirs on the Earth. A simple mass balance model was proposed for assessing possible anthropogenic impact on Baikal water geo-chemistry. Estimations of change trends showed that only for Na+, SO42-, Cl- and Mo growth rate of their average concentrations in the Lake occurred to be 1%, 3%, 7% and 2% in every 10 years. Space-time monitoring schedules for all water body compartments of the Lake are proposed as well as similar moni-toring programs for tributaries, precipitations, bottom sediments, aquatic biota.