0000000000653171
AUTHOR
Aale Roos
Model ecosystem for environmental transport of xenobiotics
A compartmentalized aquatic-terrestrial flow-through model ecosystem was constructed for studying the transport of agricultural chemicals from the soil to the aquatic environment in soil drainage. Factors were investigated on the fate of reference toxicant,14C-DDT, in the subsystems of the model. The behavior of DDT corresponds to its behavior in natural soil/water systems. The soil, acting as a reservoir, retained most of the DDT. The transportation of DDT to the aquatic compartment was negligible, with low availability to the aquatic biota. Because of the dynamic nature of the model, variation was evident between and within model units.
An evaluation of a model ecosystem with DDT
The reproducibility, variability, and reliability of a simple aquatic-terrtestrial model ecosystem experiment was tested with p,p'-DDT. The variation among the model replicates as well as within the units was studied by using hierarchal analysis of variance. the complete budget of the chemical was calculated and a theoretical transport model was constructed. The degradation and accumulation of DDT was followed by gas chromatographic residue analysis, which showed good reproducibility of the experimental design. The degradation of DDT in the model was similar to that found in the field, but the determination of concentration factors was questionable. The material balance tables revealed that…