Monitoring
Several locations were chosen for sediment sampling on the Hungarian part of the rivers Szamos and Tisza. They stretch from the Hungarian-Romanian border in the north-east to the Hungarian-Serbian border in the south. In 2005, two further tributaries of the Tisza were sampled for the assessment of additional heavy metal sources.The sampling at the locations was laid out to retrieve sediments with a relatively high content of the fine grain sizes. Sediments were sampled along the river bank.
Map of the Tisza River and the sampling locations
The surface sediments comprise a thickness of up to 5 cm. They were collected by scooping carefully with a shovel.
The sediment profiles were retrieved with a gravitation corer (Mondsee corer, Uwitec, Mondsee, Austria) or in some cases by manually pressing the plastic inliner into the sediment. The cores were divided into depth-oriented sections according to visual characteristics
