Measuring sediment grain size across the catchment to reef continuum: Improved methods and environmental insights.
Laser diffraction
Marine sediments
Mineral sediments
Suspended particulate matter
Journal
Marine pollution bulletin
ISSN: 1879-3363
Titre abrégé: Mar Pollut Bull
Pays: England
ID NLM: 0260231
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Jul 2021
Jul 2021
Historique:
received:
12
12
2020
revised:
17
02
2021
accepted:
28
03
2021
pubmed:
8
5
2021
medline:
10
6
2021
entrez:
7
5
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Sediments collected within freshwater, estuarine and marine habitats were used to trial various chemical and physical pre-treatments to develop a systematic protocol for grain-size analysis using laser diffraction. Application of this protocol mitigates the influence of bio-physical processes that may transform grain-size distributions, enabling the characterisation and quantification of 'primary' mineral sediments across the complex freshwater-marine continuum to be more reliably assessed. Application of the protocol to two Great Barrier Reef (Australia) river catchments and their estuaries reveals the ecologically relevant <20 μm fraction comprises a larger component of exported sediment than existing methods indicate. These findings are highly relevant when comparing measured data to grain-size-specific modelled sediment loads and water-quality targets. Finally, adoption of the protocol also improves the environmental interpretation of the influence of 'terrigenous sediment' in marine settings, including quantification of newly-delivered flood plume sediment.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33962086
pii: S0025-326X(21)00373-8
doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112339
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
112339Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.