Chemical and Mineralogical Nature of The Sediments of Sawa Lake in Muthanna Governorate, Southwestern Iraq

The sediments of the Sawa lake surrounded area, southern Iraq, have unique proprieties that are interesting to researchers. Four sites located at varying distances from the lake were selected to study some of the properties of the lake sediment. The results indicate that the study soil is saline soils because of the values of the three salinity criteria (EC, TDS, and NaCl(. The values of electrical conductivity ranged between (100.11 and 74.78) ds.m −1 for surface depths, whereas for subsurface depths ranged between (14.66 and 38.55) ds.m −1 . The values of the total soluble salts ranged from (7.4 and 85.67) g/L. The percentage of sodium chloride ranged between (3.1 and 8.5)%. The results present that the soils of the study fall within the neutral to the low basal soils as the values of the degree of interaction ranged between (7.00 and 7.55). The sand proportion in soil texture was more than clay and loam proportions, which ranged between (420 and 780) g.kg −1 . The dominance of the intermediate soil texture (loam) category for most depths of the study soil (S.C.L, S.L(. The distribution of sand particles of different sizes took the following patterns: The first location, which is far from the lake was the dominance of the soft particles rather than coarse particles. The second site, the closest to the lake, was the dominance of rougher particles. The soft and semi-soft particles of the sand were prevalent in the third and fourth sites, which were the distances between (155) m to (147) m, respectively. The results indicated the convergence of sediment content of light and heavy metals in all locations and homogeneity of distribution of metals in all sites.