CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF RIVERS AND LAKES 



G43 



Table S3. — Boron content of lakes and rivers 



The boron content of waters in Japan appears to be 

 remarkably high. The rivers Agatsuma and Okuresawa 

 receive water from boron-rich mineral springs, but the 

 boron in the rivers of the Tone system is believed to be 

 meteoric. The boron content of these waters is even 

 higher than it appears by comparison with the other 

 results of table 83 if account is taken of the 10 waters 

 listed in the general tables, from Peru, Australia, 

 Uganda, and the western United States, in which no 

 measurable boron was present. Except for the possi- 

 bility of gross technical errors in one direction or the 

 other, it may be that the high boron content of waters 

 from Japan, both atmospheric and terrestrial, is a 

 result of the vulcanism of that country, and that the 

 occasional very low figures reported elsewhere are due 

 to biological removal of the element. The latter possi- 

 bility was explored by Odum and Parrish (1954), and, 

 although they considered it unlikely in their moderately 

 boron-rich Florida waters, it is possible that biological 

 removal of boron may occur in some places. 



The most representative body of published data is 

 that of G. S. Konovalov (1959) for the major rivers of 

 the U.S.S.R. The estimate they yield, of 13 ppb, is 

 probably not far from the mean boron concentration of 

 the rivers of the world. A similar set of unpublished 

 data for the rivers of North America and Norway has a 



mean boron content of 11.6 ppb (W. H. Durum, written 

 communication, I960). 



LITHIUM 



There is a considerable scatter in the available data 

 for lithium. Some of the data are presented in table 

 84. Additional data are in table 59 in the general 

 analyses section. The largest set, 27 analyses, yields 

 a Na/Li ratio of about 1,500, not far above the crustal 

 ratio. It is tempting to ascribe the low Na/Li ratios 

 exhibited by a few waters to an overestimate of lithium, 

 especially since Yamagata (1951 a, b) and Borovik- 

 Romanova, Korolev, and Kutsenko (1954), who were 

 most seriously concerned with the element, obtained 

 rather low figures for its concentration in water. The 

 enrichment of lithium in lake water postulated by 

 Hutchinson (1957) on the basis of some analytical 

 results of Lohuis, Meloche, and Juday (1938) is ob- 

 viously not a general phenomenon, but it is not possible 

 to be certain from the data available that it does not 

 occur in some waters. There seems to be a tendency 

 for the relatively dilute waters from continental locali- 

 ties to have lower Na/Li ratios than the concentrated 

 continental waters or the waters from oceanic localities. 



Table 84. — Lithium content of lake and river waters 



Locality 



Palicer Teich, Yugo- 

 slavia. 



A large number of water 

 samples of different 

 origin. 



Laguna Encantada 



Agua de Puquio 



SaltonSea, Calif 



Little Borax Lake, 

 Calif. 



Mono Lake, Calif 



Amargosa River, Nev. . 



Ruzizi River, Tan- 

 ganyika. 



Malagarasi River, 

 Tanganyika. 



Luichi River, 

 Tanganyika. 



Lake Tanganyika 

 surface. 



Lake Tanganyika 700m. 



14 Japanese rivers: 



Range 



Mean.. 



Major North Ameri- 

 can rivers. 



Author 



Protia (1935). 



Borovik-Romanova, 

 Korolev, and 

 Kutsenko (1954). 

 See table 72. 



Do. 



See table 19. 



Do. 



Do. 

 Do. 

 Do. 



Do. 



Do. 



Do. 



Do. 



See table 47. 

 Do. 



W. H. Durum 

 (written com- 

 munication, 1960). 



RUBIDIUM 



Schmidt (1882, quoted in Hutchinson, 1957) re- 

 ported 0.055 ppm of rubidium in the water of Lake 

 Peipus. In the fight of more recent work, such as the 

 spectrographic studies of Borovik-Romanova (1946), 

 this concentration seems unduly high, and may rep- 

 resent the deficiencies of the chemical methods of 

 his time rather than the rubidium concentration of 

 the hydrosphere. Yamagata (1951b) found the rubid- 

 ium content of 14 rivers of Japan to range from 



