Brackish areas are where freshwater and seawater meet and possess high geographical and biological importance. However, no unified evaluation method exists for brackish sediments. Therefore, this study applies both the fresh water-sediment quality guidelines (F-SQGs) and the marine-sediment quality guidelines (M-SQGs) to evaluate metal contamination in brackish areas of Korea. The predicted reliability was examined using a receiver operation characteristic (ROC) curve. In the threshold effect level (TEL) evaluation of F-SQGs and M-SQGs, some metals (Cu, Zn, Hg, and Cd) showed significant differences according to guideline characteristics. The ROC curve showed that the predicted reliability of F-SQGs was 97.8 %, which was higher than M-SQGs (91.7 %). From the results of TEL evaluation and ROC curve prediction, F-SQGs are more suitable for the evaluation of brackish sediments in South Korea than M-SQGs.
Keywords: Brackish area sediment; Metals; Receiver operation characteristic curve; Sediment quality guidelines; Sediment toxicity.
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