Assessing Contamination Levels and Ecological Impacts in Lakes: A Comprehensive Review on Worldwide Lakes

Abstract

Lakes are vital in retaining global and local water balances. In past few years, the lakes have faces numerous changes. Present review paper discusses the lake sediment contamination due to presence of heavy metals. Total 53 important lakes around the globe were chosen to carry out the current research. To evaluate heavy metal contamination in lake sediments, heavy metals such as Pb, Ni, Co, Cr, Cu, Zn were analysed and discussed. It was observed that almost all African lakes had existence of Cu and Zn in their sediments. Lakes like the Manzala Lake in Egypt showed a greter percentage of Cu having concentration 110 ppm while Zn was observed in the Naivasha Lake in Kenya having concentration 231.94 ppm. American lakes showed the dominance of heavy metals like Cu, Pb and Zn in significant percentage. Maximum proportion of Zn was observed in the Michigan Lake, USA having value 317 ppm. Asian lakes showed the existence of heavy metals like Cr, Ni, Pb, Zn, and Cu in almost all lakes. The presence of Zn in Asian lakes like the Manchar Lake in Pakistan was up to 154 ppm, the Hazar Lake in Turkey showed value 210 ppm and the Nansi Lake in China showed concentration 149.96 ppm. Asian lake sediments showed existence of all kind of heavy metals except Cobalt. Cu and Zn was also detected in majority of lakes which exceeded the average crustal value. It is necessary to analyse pollution in lake as it has adverse effect on ecosystem.