Modelling of migration and fate of selected persistent organic pollutants in the Gulf of Gdansk and the Vistula catchment (Poland): selected results from the EU ELOISE EuroCat project

The ELOISE EU EuroCat project integrated natural and social sciences to link the impacts affecting the coastal sea to the human activities developed along the catchments. In EuroCat project river catchments' changes and their impact on the inflow area were analysed. The information was linked with environmental models. The part of the EU ELOISE EuroCat project focusing on the Vistula River catchment and the Baltic Sea costal zone was named VisCat. Within the framework of the EU ELOISE EuroCat - VisCat project, CoZMo-POP (Coastal Zone Model for Persistent Organic Pollutants), a non-steady-state multicompartmental mass balance model of long-term chemical fate in the coastal environment or the drainage basin of a large lake environment was used. The model is parameterised and tested herein to simulate the long-term fate and distribution of selected HCHs (hexachlorocyclohexanes) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the Gulf of Gdansk and the Vistula River drainage basin environment. The model can also be used in the future to predict future concentrations in relation to various emission scenarios and in management of economic development and regulations of substance-emission to this environment. However, this would require more extensive efforts in the future on model parameterisation and validation in order to increase the confidence in current model outputs.