Compound-specific radiocarbon analysis to evaluate the contribution of Peace River floodings to the PAH background in the Peace-Athabasca Delta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The oil sands of Northern Alberta, Canada are one of the largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. The rapid growth of the bitumen exploitation in this region involves large scale mining infrastructure, raising questions about the environmental impact of these operations. One of the main issues is the emission of hazardous organic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs, which are found naturally in petroleum, are also produced through incomplete combustion and diagenesis of organic matter. The complex nature of the surrounding geology (natural levels of bitumen) requires tools able to discriminate sources of pollutants. The establishment of the PAH background is crucial in order to investigate the impacts of oil sands mining in the Athabasca region. Here we present a new approach to discriminate the sources of alkylated PAHs (fossil or modern biomass) and their relative contributions. Using a dated sediment sequence from a lake situated in the Peace-Athabasca Delta periodically flooded by the Peace River, 6 different groups of parent and alkylated PAHs were extracted and collected by preparative capillary gas chromatography (PCGC) for natural abundance radiocarbon (14C) measurement. Three grouped layers each comprising approximately 10 years of sedimentation and spanning the period of mining operations (i.e., the past 40 years) were analyzed. We report here the first use of 14C measurements on alkylated PAHs extracted from lake sediments. Our results showed low radiocarbon content for all alkylated and parent PAHs analyzed in the three sediment layers. However, a slight trend toward a more modern PAH input can be seen up-core. PAH isomers ratios pointed to a major influence of petroleum input in the entire lake sequence, supporting the predominance of a fossil carbon source as indicated by the low radiocarbon contents. As the Peace River cuts through the Peace oil sands formation, our results can be explained by the main contribution of PAHs originating from periodic flooding events as previously documented for this lake. We further interpret the modern proportion of alkylated PAHs as being contributed from forest fires. These results provide greater insight into the variability of the alkylated PAH sources, and highlight the potential of this isotopic technique for source apportionment of airborne PAHs in lakes from the Athabasca oil sands region.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".