Strontium isotope chemistry, presented here, combined with previously obtained groundwater ion chemistry elucidates the stratigraphy of buried sedimentary rocks of the southern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Whereas in groundwater of the northern Peninsula, ion chemistry is dominated by contact with a saline intrusion, the groundwater of southern Campeche and southern Quintana Roo has high SO4/Cl a...

[1] Unsaturated zone salt reservoirs are potentially mobilized by increased groundwater recharge as semiarid lands are cultivated. This study explores the amounts of pore water sulfate and fluoride relative to chloride in unsaturated zone profiles, evaluates their sources, estimates mobilization due to past land use change, and assesses the impacts on groundwater quality. Inventories of water-e...

Chemical retention, i.e., partition of the element between aqueous solution and mineral surface, is a key phenomenon for assessing the safety of possible nuclear waste disposal. For this purpose, the sorption of Eu(III) onto a model mineral-alpha-alumina-is studied here, including the effects of groundwater chemistry: pH and concentrations of small organic and inorganic ligands (acetate, oxalat...

The podzolic soils of the Kola Peninsula, Russia, have in localised areas been highly contaminated with copper and nickel from smelting activities. Migration and retention of these metals were investigated in undisturbed soil columns irrigated with simulated background and polluted precipitation in order to study the temporal processes of retention and release within the soil. The mineral layer...

The Murray Basin in southeastern Australia is an intracratonic sedimentary basin of Cainozoic age that extends across 300 000 square kilometres of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The upper sequences, principally the Loxton–Parilla Sands, Calivil Formation and Shepparton Formation, contain economic accumulations of heavy mineral sands; bentonite; kaolin; and gypsum. Mineral sands ...

In many parts of the world, major regional drinking water resources are represented by large-scale sandstone aquifers. In particular in arid climate zones, society depends on the water from such aquifer systems because of the lack of alternative renewable drinking water resources. The often fossil (and hence non-renewable) groundwaters of deep sandstone aquifer systems are not likely to show an...

Microorganisms are ubiquitous in the shallow subsurface often attached to sediment surfaces where they alter the geochemical microenvironment and mediate weathering reactions. Microbial attachment on sediment grains, however, is heterogeneous and the variability of microbial occurrence cannot be easily explained. This study examined how phosphate mineral and iron oxide inclusions in feldspars i...

Groundwater and sediment samples (~1 m depth) at sites representative of different groundwater pathways were collected to determine the aqueous speciation of sulfur and the fractionation of sulfur isotopes in aqueous and solid phases. In addition, selected sediment samples at 5 depths (from oxic to anoxic layers) were collected to investigate the processes controlling sulfur biogeochemistry in ...