A nationwide acid sulfate soil study - A rapid and cost-efficient approach for characterizing large-scale features.

Acid sulfate soils are sulfide-rich soils that pose a notable environmental risk as their strong acidity and low pH mobilizes metals from soil minerals leading to both acidification and metal contamination of the surrounding environment. In this study a rapid and cost-efficient approach was developed to resolve the main distribution patterns and geochemical features of acid sulfate soils throughout coastal plains stretching for some 2000 km in eastern, southern, and western Sweden. Of the investigated 126 field sites, 47 % had acid sulfate soils including 33 % active, 12 % potential, and 2 % pseudo acid sulfate soils. There were large regional variations in the extent of acid sulfate soils, with overall much higher proportions of these soils along the eastern coastal plains facing the Baltic Sea than the western coastal plains facing the Kattegatt/Skagerrak (Atlantic Ocean). The sulfur concentrations of the soil's parent material, consisting of reduced near-pH neutral sediments, were correlated inversely both with the minimum pH of the soils in situ (rS = -0.65) and the pH after incubation (oxidation) of the reduced sediments (rS = -0.77). This indicated the importance of sulfide levels in terms of both present and potential future acidification. Hence, the higher proportion of acid sulfate soils in the east was largely the result of higher sulfur concentrations in this part of the country. The study showed that the approach was successful in identifying large-scale spatial patterns and geochemical characteristics of importance for environmental assessments related to these environmentally unfriendly soils.

A carbon mass-balance budget for a periglacial catchment in West Greenland - Linking the terrestrial and aquatic systems.

Climate change is predicted to have far reaching consequences for the mobility of carbon in arctic landscapes. On a regional scale, carbon cycling is highly dependent on interactions between terrestrial and aquatic parts of a catchment. Despite this, studies that integrate the terrestrial and aquatic systems and study entire catchments using site-specific data are rare. In this work, we use data partly published by Lindborg et al. (2016a) to calculate a whole-catchment carbon mass-balance budget for a periglacial catchment in West Greenland. Our budget shows that terrestrial net primary production is the main input of carbon (99% of input), and that most carbon leaves the system through soil respiration (90% of total export/storage). The largest carbon pools are active layer soils (53% of total carbon stock or 13 kg C m-2), permafrost soils (30% of total carbon stock or 7.6 kg C m-2) and lake sediments (13% of total carbon stock or 10 kg C m-2). Hydrological transport of carbon from the terrestrial to aquatic system is lower than in wetter climates, but the annual input of 4100 kg C yr-1 (or 3.5 g C m-2 yr-1) that enters the lake via runoff is still three times larger than the eolian input of terrestrial carbon. Due to the dry conditions, the hydrological export of carbon from the catchment is limited (5% of aquatic export/storage or 0.1% of total export/storage). Instead, CO2 evasion from the lake surface and sediment burial accounts for 57% and 38% of aquatic export/storage, respectively (or 0.8% and 0.5% of total export/storage), and Two-Boat Lake acts as a net source of carbon to the atmosphere. The limited export of carbon to downstream water bodies make our study system different from wetter arctic environments, where hydrological transport is an important export pathway for carbon.

Comparison of boreal acid sulfate soil microbial communities in oxidative and reductive environments.

Due to land uplift after the last ice age, previously stable Baltic Sea sulfidic sediments are becoming dry land. When these sediments are drained, the sulfide minerals are exposed to air and can release large amounts of metals and acid into the environment. This can cause severe ecological damage such as fish kills in rivers feeding the northern Baltic Sea. In this study, five sites were investigated for the occurrence of acid sulfate soils and their geochemistry and microbiology was identified. The pH and soil chemistry identified three of the areas as having classical acid sulfate soil characteristics and culture independent identification of 16S rRNA genes identified populations related to acidophilic bacteria capable of catalyzing sulfidic mineral dissolution, including species likely adapted to low temperature. These results were compared to an acid sulfate soil area that had been flooded for ten years and showed that the previously oxidized sulfidic materials had an increased pH compared to the unremediated oxidized layers. In addition, the microbiology of the flooded soil had changed such that alkalinity producing ferric and sulfate reducing reactions had likely occurred. This suggested that flooding of acid sulfate soils mitigates their environmental impact.

Landscape development during a glacial cycle: modeling ecosystems from the past into the future.

Understanding how long-term abiotic and biotic processes are linked at a landscape level is of major interest for analyzing future impact on humans and the environment from present-day societal planning. This article uses results derived from multidisciplinary work at a coastal site in Sweden, with the aim of describing future landscape development. First, based on current and historical data, we identified climate change, shoreline displacement, and accumulation/erosion processes as the main drivers of landscape development. Second, site-specific information was combined with data from the Scandinavian region to build models that describe how the identified processes may affect the site development through time. Finally, the process models were combined to describe a whole interglacial period. With this article, we show how the landscape and ecosystem boundaries are affected by changing permafrost conditions, peat formation, sedimentation, human land use, and shoreline displacement.

Inferences about radionuclide mobility in soils based on the solid/liquid partition coefficients and soil properties.

To assist transport modeling in assessments of the radiological impact of a geological repository for radioactive wastes, the mobility of various elements was studied in arable and wetland soils in the Forsmark region, Sweden. Pore water and total element contents were determined for five types of unconsolidated deposits (regolith), spanning a wide range of soil properties with respect to pH and organic matter content. Two soil depths were sampled to capture element mobility in regolith layers affected and unaffected by soil-forming processes. The solid/liquid partition coefficients (K d values) for most elements varied significantly among regolith types. For most elements, the observed variations in K d values could be explained by variations in soil properties. For many elements, mobility increased with decreasing soil pH. The results provide a significant addition of data on radionuclide retention in soils, taking account of soil properties and processes.