The Upper Tisza floodplain region provides a
mosaic of aquatic habitats including a series of oxbows.
Inorganic contaminants can accumulate in the sediment;
thus, the sediment is good indicator of the contamination
of these oxbows. Our aim was to explore the effects of
anthropogenic activities on the concentration of ele-
ments and also to study the influence of vegetation types
on the element in surface sediment of oxbows. We
studied eight oxbows: two of them were protected, four
of them were used for fishing and two of them were
contaminated with domestic sewage. The following el-
ements were measured with MP-AES in surface sedi-
ment: Al, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn. The elemental
concentration was compared to the toxicity classes of
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the as-
sessment of the level of toxicity was based on this
comparison. We found that studied oxbows were differ-
ent from each other based on the elemental concentra-
tions of sediment using canonical discriminant analysis
and analysis of variance. Based on the elemental con-
centration in surface sediment of oxbows, separation
was also found among vegetation types. But significant
difference was not found in the concentrations of ele-
ments based on vegetation types. Our results demon-
strated that the anthropogenic activities had remarkable
effects on the elemental concentration of surface sedi-
ment in oxbows. Our findings suggest that the sediment
is useful to assess the effects of anthropogenic activities
on elemental concentrations of oxbows
