The Importance of Microbial Iron Sulfide Oxidation for Nitrate Depletion in Anoxic Danish Sediments

Nitrate (NO₃ ^?) reduction processes are important for depleting the NO₃ ^? load from agricultural source areas before the discharge water reaches surface waters or groundwater aquifers. In this study, we experimentally demonstrate the co-occurrence of microbial iron sulfide oxidation by NO₃ ^? (MISON) and other NO₃ ^?-depleting processes in a range of contrasting sediment types: sandy groundwater aquifer, non-managed minerotrophic freshwater peat and two brackish muddy sediments. Approximately 1/3 of the net NO₃ ^? reduction was caused by MISON in three of the four environments despite the presence of organic carbon in the sediment. An apparent salinity limitation to MISON was observed in the most brackish environment. Addition of high surface area synthetically precipitated iron sulfide (FeS _x ) to the aquifer sediment with the lowest natural FeS _x reactivity increased both the relative fraction of NO₃ ^? reduction linked to MISON from approximately 30–100 % and the absolute rates by a factor of 17, showing that the potential for MISON-related NO₃ ^? reduction is environmentally significant and rate limited by the availability of reactive FeS _x .     

Top-/bottom-soil ratios and enrichment factors: What do they really show?

High top-/bottom-soil ratios, or high values of “enrichment factors” (EFs), are used as a proof for major anthropogenic impact on the geochemistry of the Earth surface. The idea behind calculating such ratios is that soils taken at depth or “average crust” can provide the geochemical background for the soils collected at the Earth surface. However, a soil profile is not a closed system, element exchange between the different layers, depending on and varying with the chemical properties of the different elements, and their turnover in the biosphere is the essence of soil formation. High top-/bottom-soil ratios, or EFs, may thus highlight the geochemical de-coupling of the lithosphere from the biosphere rather than contamination. This is demonstrated by using regional data from 258 soil O- and B-horizon samples collected from the Czech Republic (76,800 km²). Results show no relationship between the ratios and the magnitude of anthropogenic emissions. The visible relationship between element concentrations and sources in a map of the spatial distribution of the elements is lost when maps for the top-/bottom-soil ratio or EFs are constructed. The value of the data lies in the spatial elemental distribution, and not in ratios calculated based on misconceptions.     

Continuous simulation for computing design hydrographs for water structures

The contribution discusses the problems with modelling design floods for water structures. The statistical extrapolations of observed flood series of, for example, 80 years “only” to the annual exceedance probability AEP = 0.01 is difficult due to the large variability in extreme values. For large dams, however, the AEP = 0.001 or 0.0001 is required. Most of the uncertainties in hydrological modelling are epistemic (uncertainties in model structure, model parameters, inputs, calibration data, and in measurements) and moreover some measurements can be disinformative. With powerful computers, it is now possible to produce very long series (100 to100,000 years in hourly time step) using precipitation and temperatures computed with a weather model. Within the framework of the Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) many (thousands) of such continuous simulations are produced and compared to the observed historical data. According to Keith Beven's Manifesto for the equifinality thesis the differences between modelled and observed values should not be larger than some limits of acceptability based on what is known about errors in the input and output observations used for model evaluation (e.g., for flow the current metering data are used). The unacceptable realisations are rejected. We have been working with the frequency version of TOPMODEL in various versions according to the unique characteristics of each catchment. Design hydrographs for water structures are then extracted from the acceptable realisations. The continuous simulation with uncertainty estimation seems nowadays the most promising method of computing design hydrographs for important water structures, even if issues associated with epistemic uncertainty of model assumptions remain.     

Spatially distributed observations in constraining inundation modelling uncertainties

The performance of two modelling approaches for predicting floodplain inundation is tested using observed flood extent and 26 distributed floodplain level observations for the 1997 flood event in the town of Usti nad Orlici in the Czech Republic. Although the one‐dimensional hydrodynamic model and the integrated one‐ and two‐dimensional model are shown to perform comparably against the flood extent data, the latter shows better performance against the distributed level observations. Comparable performance in predicting the extent of inundation is found to be primarily as a result of the urban reach considered, with flood extent constrained by road and railway embankments. Uncertainty in the elevation model used in both approaches is shown to have little effect on the reliability in predicting flood extent, with a greater impact on the ability in predicting the distributed level observations. These results show that reliability of flood inundation modelling in urban reaches, where flood risk assessment is of more interest than in more rural reaches, can be improved greatly if distributed observations of levels in the floodplain are used in constraining model uncertainties. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.