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Stable Cu and Zn isotopes as tracers of contamination in organic waste-amended soils

Fekiacova Z., Formentini T.A., Da Veiga M., Favaretto N., Ceretta C.A., Doelsch E.. 2019. In : Biogeochemistry of trace elements for improved environmental sustainability and human health. Nanjing : ISTEB, 1 p.. International Conference on the Biogeochemistry of Trace Elements (ICOBTE 2019). 15, 2019-05-05/2019-05-09, Nanjing (Chine).

Agriculture, and particularly animal husbandry, is one of the major waste producing activities on the planet. In response to continuously growing demand for animal protein, livestock production generates increasing amounts of manure. In 2017, 1 billion pigs were produced in the World, with approximately half of it in China. Livestock manure treatment and disposal have become a major issue of the present-day agriculture. Spreading this organic-rich amendment on the soil helps improving soil physico-chemical properties and fertility at the same time that allows the manure recycling. Yet, pig and dairy manures are also rich in Cu and Zn. These potentially toxic trace metals are added to the animal feed, but not digested by the animals. Thus, intensive use of pig and dairy manures as amendment has for a consequence massif inputs of Cu and Zn in agricultural soils. In order to anticipate and prevent degradation of agricultural soils amended with livestock manure, it is crucial to understand the sources and the long-term behavior of these exogenous metals. Published works on manure-borne Cu and Zn in soils described rather low plant uptake, contamination of water resources and accumulation within the soil. A few studies, focused on the speciation, showed that Cu and Zn are present as Cu2S and ZnS in the pig manure. However, no ZnS was detected in soils amended with pig slurry, instead, Zn was found to be adsorbed on clay minerals and iron ox-hydroxides. In addition, none of these studies was able to differentiate between natural and exogenous trace elements. We have investigated manure-amended soils and the corresponding pig and dairy manures applied over several years in three experimental sites located in Brazil. We have analyzed Cu and Zn concentrations and isotopic compositions aiming at evaluating the potential of stable Cu and Zn isotopes as tracers of exogenous metal transformation and redistribution in soils. We observed that livestock manure amendments have rathe

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