Similarity of whole‐sediment molecular diffusion coefficients in freshwater sediments of low and high porosity. Sweerts, J., P., R., A., Kelly, C., A., Rudd, J., W., M., Hesslein, R., H., & Cappenberg, T., E. Limnology and Oceanography, 36(2):335-341, 1991.
Similarity of whole‐sediment molecular diffusion coefficients in freshwater sediments of low and high porosity [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
-Whole-sediment molecular diffu-sion coefficients (0,) for tritiated water in pore waters of various lakes were determined experi-mentally by adding 'H,O to the overlying water of asphyxiated (without bioirrigation) and un-asphyxiated cores and measuring the resulting pore-water profiles after a period of time. Our objectives were to determine the relationship be-tween D, and Do (the diffusion coefficient in pure water) in sediments with a wide range of poros-ities and organic contents and to examine the influence of bioitigation on solute transport and on the predictability of 0,. We found that Do/D, did not change as much as expected with increasing porosity, i.e. in low-porosity sediments the average DJD, was 1.8 +O. 1 and in high-porosity sediments it was 1.520.2. We also found that the effect of fauna1 activity on the predictability of D, was only significant in sediments with high (14,000 ind. m-z) inverte-brate populations. This result means that in most freshwater sediments, the sediment diffusion co-efficient can be predicted reliably from the mo-lecular diffusion coefficient at in situ temperature. Measurement of vertical fluxes of sub-stances across the sediment-water interface is important in both freshwater and marine research. These flux measurements are use-ful in studying diagenesis below the sedi-Acknowledgments We thank N. Hafkamp, his crew, and P. Kieskamp for technical assistance, V. St.Louis, H. Roon, A. Fu-rutani, B. Miskimin, and D. Hamilton were helpful in the field and in the laboratory. 0. van Tongeren was helpful with the mathematical modeling of the tritium diffusion profiles. Valuable criticism of the manuscript was provided by G. Brunskill. The comments of M. Rutgers van der Loeff and two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated. This research was partially supported by NSERC grants OGPGPOlO and STRGP036 and the Depart-ment of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada. men&water interface as well as its effects on the chemistry of the overlying water. Ver-tical fluxes of solutes between sediments and the overlying water can be calculated from Fick's first law as described by Bemer (1980):

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