Modelling of long-term Zn, Cu, Cd and Pb dynamics from soils fertilised with organic amendments

Cagnarini, Claudia; Lofts, Stephen; D'Acqui, Luigi Paolo; Mayer, Jochen; Grüter, Roman; Tandy, Susan; Schulin, Rainer; Costerousse, Benjamin; Orlandini, Simone; Renella, Giancarlo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-107-2021

Articles | Volume 7, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-107-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-107-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 7, issue 1

Original research article

|

12 May 2021

Original research article |

| 12 May 2021

Modelling of long-term Zn, Cu, Cd and Pb dynamics from soils fertilised with organic amendments

Claudia Cagnarini, Stephen Lofts, Luigi Paolo D'Acqui, Jochen Mayer, Roman Grüter, Susan Tandy, Rainer Schulin, Benjamin Costerousse, Simone Orlandini, and Giancarlo Renella

Download

Final revised paper (published on 12 May 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 May 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Revision report manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 21 Jun 2020
- AC1: 'Answers to Referee#1', Claudia Cagnarini, 06 Jul 2020
- AC2: 'Answers to Referee#1', Claudia Cagnarini, 04 Aug 2020
RC2: 'My review', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Jul 2020
- AC3: 'Answers to Referee#2', Claudia Cagnarini, 04 Aug 2020
EC1: 'Please revise your response letters', Karsten Kalbitz, 13 Aug 2020
- AC4: 'Final answers to Referee 1', Claudia Cagnarini, 18 Aug 2020
- AC5: 'Final answers to Referee 2', Claudia Cagnarini, 18 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Aug 2020) by Karsten Kalbitz

AR by Claudia Cagnarini on behalf of the Authors (31 Oct 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Nov 2020) by Karsten Kalbitz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I thank the authors for the responses they provided to each of my comments. If I was convinced by some responses (e.g. about DOC concentration or the two scenarios of temporal pH and SOC trends for long-term ecotoxicological predictions), I am also still very doubtful about what it is to me the bulk of the paper, i.e. the modelling of total and labile metal concentrations in soil overtime.

To me, the adequate prediction of total metal concentation in soil overtime is a vital perequisite to an adequate prediction of the labile metal pool, more particular when the latter is thereafter used to predict ecotoxicological consequences. Indeed, total metal concentrations in contaminated soils remained the primary (and even sometime a reasonably good) indicator for further risk assessment (see e.g. Mossa et al. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137441). However, the authors provided the simulations of total metal concentrations overtime in figure S6, which showed that predictions matched very barely observations with some very large discrepancy both in the absolute values predicted and in the trends simulated (increasing vs. decreasing). Considering such large discrepancy, it is even surprising that the predictions of labile metal concentrations were relatively good and it questions how it can be as good while total metal concentrations are poorly predicted. Something does not match here. As already underlined, the case of Cu is even more worrying and should definitely be removed. Overall, the IDDM is an interesting approach but I think that the dataset from the Zofe used here to assess the relevance of its application to the study of the long-term soil contamination by organic amendment applications is an issue. The trends in metal concentration in soil observed are far from the bulk of literature showing an increasing pattern of metal concentrations in soil overtime and this discrepancy with the literature is not clearly characterised and discussed (only disputable hypotheses for Cu for instance). To say that briefly, the tool is relevant but the present case study is not due to too many uncertainties and non-representative and non-understandable patterns in the dataset.

Secondly, the fact that the authors did not have dedicated measurements to validate the modelling approach used to account for lateral mixing is worrying. Considering the simulations presented in figure 5 for the Idealised trend, it is really not obvious to say that lateral mixing provide an improvement in the fitting of the observed data (except for SS). Accordingly, the validation of the modelling approach used to account for lateral mixing with a dedicated, complementary dataset seems to me necessary.

Finally, I am not convinced by the statement about the interest of the Ftir and XRD datasets. I do not seen the necessity of using the Ftir data to confirm the decreasing trend of SOC overtime (Ftir is not an adequate tool to make quantitative estimation of SOC). Also, showing that the nature of SOC differs between treatments does not give any practical information about the potential impact of these differences on the evolution of metal lability in soil. Finally, XRD is not a very sensible technique. So, to show a change in the mineralogy of a soil sample, you need to have very important changes. In the present case, do you have factual data supporting the fact that the inorganic phases added by organic amendments can be high enough to quantitatively alter soil mineralogy. Beyond that, to my point of view, both Ftir and XRD datasets are extra datasets that do not provide additional relevant information (i.e. factual and quantitative) for the purpose of the paper which is to simulate overtime metal lability.

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (30 Nov 2020)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (12 Dec 2020) by Karsten Kalbitz

AR by Claudia Cagnarini on behalf of the Authors (31 Jan 2021) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (11 Mar 2021) by Karsten Kalbitz

ED: Publish as is (20 Mar 2021) by Johan Six (Executive editor)

AR by Claudia Cagnarini on behalf of the Authors (24 Mar 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

Application of organic amendments, although considered a sustainable form of soil fertilisation, may cause an accumulation of trace elements (TEs) in the topsoil. In this research, we analysed the concentration of zinc, copper, lead and cadmium in a > 60-year experiment in Switzerland and showed that the dynamic model IDMM adequately predicted the historical TE concentrations in plots amended with farmyard manure, sewage sludge and compost and produced reasonable concentration trends up to 2100.