How early diagenesis reveals in situ biodegradation of herbicides in sediment

D.A. Devault (1) , Sebastien Delmotte (2) , H. Macarie (3, 4) , J. Dolfing (5) , P. Anschutz (6)

1 UR AEMA - Agriculture et espace insulaire
2 MAD-Environnement
3 IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
4 IMEP - Institut Méditerranéen d'Ecologie et de Paléoécologie
5 University of Newcastle upon Tyne
6 EPOC - Environnements et Paléoenvironnements OCéaniques

Globalisation of environment contamination is one of the actual major concerns. Concentrated in the developed countries during 1950s and 1960s, the use of pesticides, particularly the organic ones, has dramatically increased since 1970s (Alavanja, 2009). Agro chemistry expansion is parallel to diffusion of other technologies involving molecules proved to be environmental contaminants. Progressive prohibition of indiscriminate use of chemicals, considered as a threat for human and environmental health, highlights their persistence and their ubiquity. Although for partly natural contaminants like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the question is to dissociate the natural input (fires) from the anthropogenic one; the synthesised molecules like herbicides do not give rise to such a controversy. However, understanding their flux from contaminated parcels and their fate in the environment requires historical overview that can be achieved through coring. In order to be informative coring needs to be performed on quiescent, biotic and unconsolidated growing matrix and for these reasons sediments are the most often sampled.

Mots clés: SEDIMENT; PESTICIDE

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

D.A. Devault, Sebastien Delmotte, H. Macarie, J. Dolfing, P. Anschutz. How early diagenesis reveals in situ biodegradation of herbicides in sediment. Herbicides and environment, Kortekamp, A. (ed.), InTech, p. 443 - p. 468, 2011, 978-953-307-476-4. ⟨hal-00584094⟩