Adaptive Strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems

Soil, with its potential to filter, buffer and transform toxic substances, can be regarded as a key factor for environmental health and therefore, the knowledge of the retention and release of contaminants are among the most important chemical processes to be understood in soils, especially against the background of the upcoming climate change. Since climate change do not affect soil characteristics right now worked on trace metal dynamics in floodplain soils dependent on seasonal changes. This may give a tendency whether trace metals could be remobilised under certain circumstances and if so to which amount. The first results show that during flood events higher amounts of trace metals are dissolved in the pore water; partly these concentrations exceed threshold values of the German soil protection guideline. Several factors can influence the behaviour of trace metals in floodplain soils. For one study site (depression) we found iron as probably the most important parameter which is responsible for arsenic dynamics in floodplain soils.