Distribution of arsenic in sediment of Hangjinhou Banner-Linhe transect in Hetao Basin, North China

In this research, we laid a Hangjinhou Banner-Linhe District drilling transect along western piedmont of Hetao Basin to the modern Yellow River, which passes through the Langshan Mountain piedmont alluvial-proluvial fan, the Yellow River paleochannel, alluvial-fluvial plain of the Yellow River and the modern Yellow River flood plain successively and based on which we collected sedimentary samples of different geomorphic units. Based on hydrogeology and sedimentology and by means of stratum tracing and transects comparison, the analysis result comes out that the arsenic (As) sediments in Hetao Basin is distributed in obvious zoning form and is closely related to the sedimentary environment. The paleochannel zone in northern Basin has the highest content of As sediments, average content reaching 12.24 μg/g. In the horizontal direction of the profile, the distribution regularity of As is consistent to that of elements like Mn, Fe, Al and TOC, since they have experienced the same geochemical process in sediments. In the vertical direction, the high-arsenic sediments are mainly formed of grey black silty-fine sand layers or interbedding layers of silty-fine sand and muddy clay, rich in organic matter. The sedimentary environments are mainly shallow lakes and depressions, where the content of As is related to that of elements like Sb, Mn, B, V, etc., and particularly has significant relation with Fe.