Natural and anthropogenic variations in the Po river waters (northern Italy): insights from a multi-isotope approach.

Po is the main Italian river and the δ(18)O and δ(2)H of its water reveal a similarity between the current meteoric fingerprint and that of the past represented by groundwater. As concerns the hydrochemisty, the Ca-HCO3 facies remained constant over the last 50 year, and only nitrate significantly increased from less than 1 mg/L to more than 10 mg/L in the 1980s, and then attenuated to a value of 9 mg/L. Coherently, δ(13)CDIC and δ(34)SSO4 are compatible with the weathering of the lithologies outcropping in the basin, while extremely variable δ(15)NNO3 indicates contribution from pollutants released by urban, agricultural and zootechnical activities.

The Po river water from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea (Italy): new insights from geochemical and isotopic (δ(18)O-δD) data.

Although the Po river is the most important fluvial system of Northern Italy, the systematic geochemical and isotopic investigations of its water are rare and were never reported for the whole basin. The present contribution aims to fill this knowledge gap, reporting a comprehensive data set including oxygen and hydrogen stable isotopes as well as major and trace element concentration of dissolved species for 54 Po river water samples, mainly collected in different hydrological conditions (peak discharge in April, drought in August) at increasing distance from the source, i.e.

Boron isotope determinations in waters and other geological materials: analytical techniques and inter-calibration of measurements.

The (11)B/(10)B ratio exhibits wide variations in nature; thus, boron isotopes have found numerous applications in geochemistry, hydrology, and environmental studies. The main analytical techniques used are as follows: positive thermal ionisation mass spectrometry is the most precise (about 0.2 per thousand of the boron isotope ratio), but requires complex and laborious sample preparation; negative thermal ionisation mass spectrometry is less precise (about 0.