Recent Advances in Environmental Geochemistry

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a new Special Issue entitled “Recent Advances in Environmental Geochemistry” in the Sustainability journal.

The environment in the 21st Century underpins our very existence. Forests, rivers, oceans, and soils provide the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we use to irrigate our fields. Preserving clean air, clean water, and fertile soil is, therefore, a very essential part of the environmental principle. Environmental sustainability is a necessity for ecological balance in the natural environment of our planet and for the protection of all natural resources, to ensure the well-being of present and future generations.

Many of the grand challenges of sustainability are closely linked to environmental geochemistry. The contribution of environmental geochemistry is to illuminate and unravel a wide range of societal and economic problems, such as the sustainable use of natural resources, the assessment of environmental problems in anthropogenic environments, and the sustainable remediation of brutally contaminated land. Thus, environmental geochemistry is an excellent tool for understanding the nature of natural resources, identifying the causes of environmental problems, and elucidating the culprits of polluted soils.

The special issue “Recent Advances in Environmental Geochemistry” in the journal Sustainability aims to highlight the latest trends in environmental geochemical research (using advanced analytical methods and ranging from macro to nano dimensions), especially from a sustainability perspective. This issue will also significantly advance/encourage the application of environmental geochemistry to sustainability science and problems.

Within this framework, we welcome original research and reviews in the form of both specialized and interdisciplinary manuscripts on:

• the biogeochemical cycling of chemical elements,
• the distribution and translocation of inorganic pollutants in the environment,
• the distribution and translocation of organic pollutants in the environment,
• the distribution of pollutants due to industrial, agricultural, and urbanization activities,
• environmental sustainability assessment.

Prof. Dr. Nastja Rogan Šmuc
Prof. Dr. Željka Fiket
Dr. Martin Gaberšek
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• inorganic pollutants
• organic pollutants
• translocation
• industrial/mining environments
• agricultural environments
• urbanized environments
• environmental assessment

Title: Comparison of the Strength of the Anthropogenic Impact in Brijuni National Park on the Marine Environment
Authors: Šikić Zoran; Župan Ivan; Šarić Tomislav; Bušljeta Ivana; Štuc Anđela; Dolenec Matej
Affiliation: University of Zadar, Department of Ecology, Agronomy and Aquaculture, Trg kneza Višeslava 9, Zadar, Croatia University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Natural Science and Engineering, Department of Geology, Aškerčeva cesta 12, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract: The presence of toxic compounds, including heavy metals, in the environment is on the one hand the result of their natural origin and, on the other hand the result of human activities that affect coastal ecosystems in particular. Toxic compounds, including heavy metals, can accumulate in the sediments near the source of pollution, which has a direct impact on their uptake by organisms and their further spread through the food chain. Marine organisms have a relatively high potential for the accumulation of toxic compounds, e.g. the accumulation of heavy metals in high concentrations. Of particular interest are benthic organisms, which have a limited movement radius and can therefore serve well as bioindicators of environmental pollution. The aim of this study was to determine the geochemical, mineralogical and isotopic properties of sediments and muscle tissue of marine organisms at different sites in the Brijuni National Park with a specific focus on assessing the degree of anthropogenic pollution. A national park is considered the most important category of nature conservation, and by definition includes a large, unaltered part of nature whose main purpose is to preserve the existing values of the area. The analysis of the mineral content in the sediments by X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows that the highest concentration of calcite, Mg-calcite and aragonite is present with a low concentration of quartz, illite and dolomite, which corresponds to the geological structure of Brijuni and the presence of bioclasts fragments. The ICP-MS method was used to determine the concentrations of major, minor and trace elements as well as the concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in marine sediments from five sites. Pollution levels, enrichment factors (EF) and the geoaccumulation index (IGEO) were calculated for certain PTEs at all five sites, showing the zinc, copper, lead and arsenic were most strongly represented in the marine sediments in the port of Veli Brijun. With increasing distance from the port, PTE values decrease , indicating that the wider marine environment is not polluted. The highest concentration of PTE is zinc at all sites. These findings highlights the pressing need for more effective measures to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment, emphasizing the importance of sustainable practices to ensure the long-therm preservation of this vital ecological resource. Keywords: NP Brijuni, marine sediment, potentially toxic elements, anthropogenic impact