FACTORS GOVERNING THE ELEMENTARY COMPOSITION OF THE HYDROSPHERE

Abstract

A new approach to identifying the geochemical character of each element in the hydrosphere has recently been developed, in which the distinctive trends of the relationship between its concentration in water and the rate of migration processes in geochemical barrier zones are investigated. In the present paper we develop this new approach further. Using this method, we have demonstrated that the rates of migration of chemical elements in the lithosphere-hydrosphere, river-ocean and ocean-atmosphere systems are in a nonlinear relationship to their concentrations. As the concentrations of the elements in these systems decrease, their migrational activities increase. Thus the geochemical behavior of elements that occur in microscopic concentrations in nature is generally not a faithful representation of the behavior of those same elements occurring at higher concentrations.