Soil pollution with heavy metals in territories, used for military transport needs in Lithuanian military grounds

Abstract

Military grounds are the largest military activity territories in Lithuania. In some of them, military activities are going on for more than 100 years. Specific nature of long-term activities carried out in military grounds with military equipment, weapons, ammunition and different busters have caused the anomalies of pollution with heavy metals in some places. One of the specific military activities is related with military transport: i.e., fields and territories for military vehicles riding can be considered as areas of specific influence. Very often military transport riding is performed with different kinds of training, like shooting, explosions, etc. This fact increases probability of severe damage to the environment. Sources of pollution are bullets and explosives, that falls into the ground and are left there, spills of fuel, swelling of vehicles' tracks, etc. The aim of the performed investigation was to find out the pollution with heavy metals level in military territories, used for different kinds of transport riding. Two sites were chosen for the investigation: aerodrome in Gaižiūnai Military Ground, and autodrome in Kairiai Military Ground. The results allowed comparing how distribution of particular pollutants is dependent on type of territory use, what are tendencies of their dispersion. Also, the results showed that in most often used military territories pollution level with most specific heavy metals (lead, copper and chromium) is very high. In some spots concentrations of these metals are few times bigger than background, and even bigger, than Maximum Allowed Concentrations.