• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.881-895
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• 2002

Sediments and river waters form the channel of Hwasun-cheon were studied in sedimentological size and geochemical analyses of metallic elements for the purposes of identification of depositional environments and geochemical characteristics. The sizes of sediments are assigned to pebble to coarse sand in mean size and polymodal in distribution. And the sediments are poorly to very poorly sorted and positively skewed. According to the grain size distributions of the sediments, the Hwasun-cheon belongs to gravel-bed river on the basis of the grain size distribution of the sediments. The behaviors of metallic elements in the sediments mainly depend on not grain size distribution but the geology connected with geomorphological reliefs near the stream. Contamination indices(CI) of Zn, Cu and Pb are 2.83 to 6.96 with average 4.31 in the sediments. Hwasun-cheon is assigned to general stream type in accordance with water quality of physical factors and chemical characteristics by Piper's diagram. Though meaningful values of BOD, T-N, T-P were locally depicted near Masan-ri, Hwasun-eup and Jiseok-cheon areas, artificial metal concentration do not represent in the most area of the stream. Sediments and river water are considered that the relatively more or less high metallic contents in the stream are originated from coal mine and urban area.