Ishiaku Ibrahim
Your question is very much general in nature.
Air pollution due to burning of forest by fire has started when human being or their fore fathers had not come into existence.
Water pollution by a factory starts right from its foundation.
In India arsenic pollution in ground water in gangetic delta has been aggravated after the partition of India by the British. Because before independence agriculture in the delta was done once in a year depending on monsoon rain. After partition, the bigger part of the delta (the eastern section: Present Bangladesh) was declared as new country. Natural source of supply of crops was cut off from the country. Multi cropping started with heavy withdrawal of ground water. Within 50 years of Partition, groundwater was contaminated with arsenic.
Thus you can easily understand, there is no general rule of estimating the number of years of pollution in the environment.
Some places and cultures have better records than others, and longer histories. Historians and archeologists may help, as well as word of mouth from old residents. Years ago, people did not necessarily un understand pollution. If you have old aerial photos, documents concerning mining, industry, communities, activities. Many of the gullies were probably caused by farming or mining. There are many types of pollution. I know of no cookbook that would answer all your questions.
Ishiaku Ibrahim
Your question is very much general in nature.
Air pollution due to burning of forest by fire has started when human being or their fore fathers had not come into existence.
Water pollution by a factory starts right from its foundation.
In India arsenic pollution in ground water in gangetic delta has been aggravated after the partition of India by the British. Because before independence agriculture in the delta was done once in a year depending on monsoon rain. After partition, the bigger part of the delta (the eastern section: Present Bangladesh) was declared as new country. Natural source of supply of crops was cut off from the country. Multi cropping started with heavy withdrawal of ground water. Within 50 years of Partition, groundwater was contaminated with arsenic.
Thus you can easily understand, there is no general rule of estimating the number of years of pollution in the environment.
Well, it depends on what type of pollution that you are interested. Basically, the Department of Environment of each country publish data on air pollution index, river water quality, generation of solid waste, deforestation rate/available forest area, as well as record on environmental disaster in a country (flood, forest fire, landslide etc.). Assuming that you are studying the seriousness of flood in a country, then you may look into the probability or how frequent such incident happened in a given period. If you are interested with monitoring the air quality of a given city, then the air pollution index is a direct and straight forward reading that you can rely on.
As a rule they try to identify the source of the specific pollutant. Then it is usually not hard to find historical (or geological) information on the beginning of the pollution. Of course both historical and geological date of the beginning is often approximate.
The technique also depends the system. In sediments, PCB contamination can correlate with sediment depth in the US. (It was banded in the 1970s). If you can estimate the yearly sedimentation rate, you can estimate the "age" of contaminants in different sediment depths. The concentrations also correlate with historical use. After nuclear detonations, there will be spikes in H3 levels at certain depths correlating with the year. Pretty interesting.
Environmental pollution is a serious matter. It is mainly related to anthropogenic activity.. Methodology can not be generalised. It is surprising to make such a big extrapolation, in which large numbers of variables are involved.
Pollution is the by product of development and growth,Pollution is accompanied by industrial growth,Agricultural growth ,increase in population lletc.hence to calculate pollulation calculate the year in which industrial revolution boomed in
There are several methods to reveal a record of pollution backwards. Beside of the already mentionned sediments, a fine method in the terrestrial environment is tree ring analysis for growth and chemical composition. This gives a chronology of yearly data on environmental change and biological reaction when performed adequately.
In the aquatic milieu coral reefs, mussels and snails have also annual rings that can be analysed.
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