Grain size partitioning of metals in contaminated,coarse-grained river floodplain sediment: Clark Fork River,Montana, U.S.A.

The traditional concept of the relationship between metal content and grain size assumes that the fine fraction carries most of the metals in natural sediments. This concept is supported in many cases by strong, significant linear relationships between total-sediment metal concentrations and percentages of various fine-size fractions. Such observations have led to development of methods to correct for the effects of grain size in order to accurately document geographical and temporal variations and identify trends in metal concentrations away from a particular source. Samples from the floodplain sediment of a large, coarse-grained river system indicates that these concepts do not hold for sediments contaminated by mining and milling wastes. In this particular system, the application of methods to correct for grain-size effects would lead to erroneous conclusions about trends of metals in the drainage. This indicates that the a priori application of grain-size correction factors limits interpretation of actual metal distributions and should not be used unless data indicate that correlations exist between metals and particular size fractions.