Soil erosion is recognized as one of the main processes of land degradation in agricultural areas. High suspended sediment loads, often generated from eroding agricultural landscapes, are known to degrade downstream environments. Accordingly, there is a need to understand soil erosion dynamics during flood events. Suspended sediment was therefore sampled in the river network and at tile drain o...

Sediment-quality assessment often is hindered by the lack of agreement between chemical and biological lines of evidence. One limitation is that the bulk sediment toxicant concentration, the most widely used chemical parameter, does not always represent the bioavailable concentration, particularly for hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in highly contaminated sediments. In the present study, w...

The ability of two differing marine sediments (one clayey, the other sandy) to attenuate the explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), dissolved in intertidal seawater from the eastern English coast of the North Sea, was examined using aerobic microcosms. Analysis of the seawater from the microcosms revealed an initial sharp decline in TNT concentration with clayey sediment in both sterilized (to ...

Land use change results in soil migration into aquatic streams during storm events. This suspended sediment, even in the absence of adsorbed contaminants, may be a significant stressor to aquatic organisms. In some parts of the US, total suspended solids (TSS) concentrations surpass 100,000 mg/L during storm events. The limited data on effects of suspended sediment concentrations on freshwater ...

The transport of sediment over an intertidal mudflat by a cross-shore tidal current is investigated analytically by formulating a mathematical model of the fluid and particulate motion. The model exploits the low gradient of the intertidal flats and is based upon a shallow-layer approximation. It is found that the sediment transport comprises advection with the mean flow, deposition and erosion...

Introduction: Micrometeorites and IDPs dominate the flux of extraterrestrial material to the earth [1] and have long been collected from the stratosphere, polar ice, and deep-sea sediments [e.g., 2]. Recent efforts have focused on locating new locations from which cosmic dust grains can be easily collected and identified. Certain regions in the Pacific Ocean with limited sources of terrestrial ...

Traditional ichnofabric-descriptive (semiquantitative) schemes rely upon subjective estimates of the degree to which original sedimentary fabrics have been disrupted. This paper presents an objective method of quantifying bioturbation in hemipelagic sediments based on a thin-section image-analysis technique. In order to perform these analyses, optical or backscattered electron micrographs are p...

In tropical regions, different species of fiddler crabs coexist on the mangrove floor, which sometimes makes it difficult to define species-specific habitat by visual inspection. The aim of this study is to find key environmental parameters which affect the distribution of fiddler crabs and to determine the habitats in which each species was most abundant. Crabs were collected from 19 sites wit...

Survival and settlement of Pocillopora damicornis larvae on hard surfaces covered with fine (<63 µm) terrigenous red clay was measured in laboratory Petri dishes. The dishes were prepared with sediment films of various thicknesses covering the bottoms. Coral larvae were incubated in the dishes for two weeks and the percent that settled on the bottom was determined. There was a statistically sig...