No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea consists of karstified carbonates. It belongs to the well-known Dinaric karst region. The coast is extremely indented and there are 718 islands with numerous rock crags and reefs. Some of the inhabited islands use their own water resources for public water supply, or plan to do it in the future. Since karst rocks are extremely permeable, the seawater intrudes into underground water resources, thereby forming the wedge. A wide transition zone occurs between this seawater wedge and fresh water aquifers. Consequently, island groundwater reserves turn brackish to a certain extent. In this study, 77 water samples were collected from a wide variety of water resources. Comprehensive statistical and mathematical multivariate analysis of these data was performed. Simple statistical approach showed several useful correlations among some parameters, and more complex multivariate techniques extracted three factors in connection with three natural processes: (1) mixing with the seawater, (2) carbonate dissolution and (3) human influence (pollution) and nitrogen transformation processes. The results of this study demonstrate that in situ measurement of electrical conductivity is adequate for the very rough field estimation of numerous parameters.

Definition of geochemical background in exploration and environmental geochemistry has always been regarded as contingent upon scale and investigated locality but mostly under assumption that hosts of processes that produce the data more or less conform individually to Gaussian law of ''central tendencies''. Recently, understanding of pedogenesis as synergetic process being characterized by non-linear dynamics renders thermodynamic approach directly applicable in assessment of geochemical thresholds, with concepts of linearity and normality set alongside in solving the problems of soil geochemistry. Seen from this perspective the work is an attempt to relate conceptual fundamentals of non-linear dynamical theory to basic statistical methods in order to elucidate the nature and origins of element subpopulations hidden in the original geochemical data from the soils of Istrian Peninsula (western Croatia). To this purpose the two major groups of soils were selected for analysis depending on the type of bedrock as one of the main soil-forming factors. Geochemical data were subjected to the trimming procedure by which the outliers were removed from the total data collective and attributed to non-linear causes precluding simple cause-and-effect relationships as the sine qua non of Gaussian distribution. Geochemical background is then defined as the normal range of data of the remaining (trimmed) dataset indicating the ''thermodynamic branch'' of the specific soil processes as opposed to outliers being described as dissipative structures.