Geomorphic and Sedimentary Impacts on the Continental Shelf after Accumulated Dredge Disposal from Rio de Janeiro Harbor, Brazil

Dias, Gilberto Tavares de Macedo; Fontana, Luiz Henrique P.; Silva, Cleverson Guizan; Silva, Rafael Cuellar de Oliveira e; Oliveira, Uirá Cavalcanti; Lima, Leonardo da Silva; Neto, José Antônio Baptista; Fonseca, Estefan Monteiro da

doi:10.22564/rbgf.v37i4.2024

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 16 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…Dumping dredged sediments can increase water turbidity and cause structural changes to the sea floor habitat, disturbing, for example, reproduction, and availability of light and food (Shackle et al, 1999;Stelzenmüller et al, 2010;Kemp et al, 2011;Kraufvelin et al, 2018;Virtasalo et al, 2018;Dias et al, 2019;Mossa and Chen, 2021). Contaminants bound to dumped sediment particles may spread through a range of processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistencies in How Environmental Risk Is Evaluated in Sweden for Dumping Dredged Sediment at Sea

et al. 2021

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Millions of tons of dredged sediment are dumped at sea annually. International conventions limit dumping when there is a risk of adverse ecological effects, for example if the sediment is contaminated. However, the perception of risk differs substantially among stakeholders and in Sweden there is a lack of guidelines for how to address such risk. In the current study, we examined exemptions to the Swedish ban on dumping at sea, to explore the extent of dumping and how ecological aspects were considered in the evaluation of risks. We analyzed data from all cases granted exemption by county administrative boards and all court cases considering exemption to the ban from the beginning of 2015 to June 2020. We found that while dumping is the least common alternative management method for dredged sediment in total number of cases (98/792), dumping is the main method in terms of volume (30.8/38.2 million m3). When considering exemptions, the courts mainly evaluated the risk of exposure to contaminants and resuspended sediment for the environment adjacent to the dumpsite. The risks from contaminants were characterized based on various lines of reasoning, mainly relying on reference values not based on a scientific correlation to environmental risk. We argue that the evaluations were not in line with current regulations and international conventions as they insufficiently accounted for the ecotoxicological risk of the dumped sediment. These issues are potentially similar in other Baltic Sea countries, where there is a similar dependency on binary chemical limit values.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistencies in How Environmental Risk Is Evaluated in Sweden for Dumping Dredged Sediment at Sea

et al. 2021

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The Anthropogenic Footprint of Physical Harm on the Seabed of Augusta Bay (Western Ionian Sea); A Geophysical Investigation

Budillon

Carlino

Innangi

et al. 2022

JMSE

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Augusta Bay is an embayment of the Hyblean sector in south-eastern Sicily (Southern Italy) that faces the Ionian Sea and includes the Rada di Augusta, a wide littoral sector sheltered by breakwaters, which hosts intense harbor activities. Rada di Augusta and the adjacent Priolo embayment were listed in the National Remediation Plan (NRP) by the Italian Ministry of Environment, as they have suffered major anthropic impacts over the last seventy years. Indeed, extensive petrochemical and industrial activities, military and commercial maritime traffic, as well as agriculture and fishery activities, have resulted in a highly complex combination of impacts on the marine environment and seafloor. In this paper, we investigate the extent of human-driven physical impacts on the continental shelf, offshore of Rada di Augusta, by means of Multibeam echosounder, Side-Scan Sonar and Chirp Sonar profilers, as well as direct seabed samplings. At least seven categories of anthropogenic footprints, i.e. anchor grooves and scars, excavations, trawl marks, targets, dumping trails, isolated dumping and dumping cumuli, mark the recent human activities at the seafloor. The practice of dredge spoil disposal, possibly protracted for decades during the last century, has altered the seafloor morphology of the central continental shelf, by forming an up-to-9 m-thick hummocky deposit, with acoustic features noticeably different from those of any other shelf lithosome originated by natural processes. All available data were reported in an original thematic map of the seafloor features, offering an unprecedented opportunity to unravel sediment facies distribution and localization of anthropogenic disturbance. Finally, the shelf area was ranked, based on the coexistence of multiple stressors from human-driven physical harm, thus providing a semi-quantitative analysis of environmental damage classification in the area.

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Geomorphic and Sedimentary Impacts on the Continental Shelf after Accumulated Dredge Disposal from Rio de Janeiro Harbor, Brazil

Cited by 2 publications

References 16 publications

Inconsistencies in How Environmental Risk Is Evaluated in Sweden for Dumping Dredged Sediment at Sea

Inconsistencies in How Environmental Risk Is Evaluated in Sweden for Dumping Dredged Sediment at Sea

The Anthropogenic Footprint of Physical Harm on the Seabed of Augusta Bay (Western Ionian Sea); A Geophysical Investigation

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