Pore water geochemistry near the sediment-water interface of a zoned, freshwater wetland in the southeastern United States

Sediment and its associated pore water were collected from a zoned, freshwater, riparian wetland, located in the Talladega National Forest, northeastern Hale County, Alabama, to study the porewater chemistry and its spatial changes within and between the wetland ecological zones. Obvious changes in pH, Eh and element concentrations were observed between the different wetland ecological zones. Major cations (Ca, Mg, and Na) and trace elements (B, Ba, Sr, and Mn) have very good spatial correlation with Fe and Mn distributions, both in the pore water and the sediment, suggesting that adsorption on, and desorption from, iron and manganese oxyhydroxides are important processes controlling the distributions of these elements in the wetland sediment. However, an equilibrium adsorption model is not able to explain the distribution of trace elements between the pore water and sediment. A redox kinetic model gives similar vertical profiles for iron and the correlated elements as those measured in the field and thus suggests that the relative rates of ferrous iron oxidation and the reductive dissolution of ferric iron in the sediment are important variables determining the distributions of these elements in the wetland pore waters.