SULFIDE PROFILE DETERMINATION IN A WATERLOGGED SOIL MICROCOSM BY IN SITU FILTRATION

An experimental soil microcosm system was built and soil was added and flooded to study the vertical distribution of dissolved sulfide. We compared the interstitial dissolved sulfide profiles among three experimental units by fitting them to the empirical model: sulfide = exp (b0 + b1 / (1-depth)). The 95% confidence intervals for b0 and b1 of the three experimental units overlapped for the same time period for the eight different sampling times during a 95-day experiment, thus suggesting that depth-sulfide profiles were not statistically different for the three experimental units. The profile determination in this study, which used an extraction method through porous polyethylene filters, was less invasive than methods where sediment samples have been removed since it involved a minimum sediment alteration. Our system could be used to study chemical transformation in flooded soils over short intervals.