The online magazine EOS, published by American Geophysical Union, has highlighted a new article from the department. The article shows that phosphorous is not only stored in lake sediments but also in streambed sediments. The phosphorous is mainly bound to different elements depending on if the streams are surrounded by forests or by agriculture.
In May 2017 Emma Lannergård, at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, made a thorough sampling of stream and lake sediments in the Sävjaån catchment area. Sävjaån enters into the river Fyrisån south of the central parts of Uppsala.
The sediment samples were analysed to investigate the amount of phosphorus stored and in which forms the phosphorus occurred.
The results show that there were large quantities of phosphorus not only in the lake sediment but also in the stream sediment. In the lake sediment and in the sediment of the streams surrounded by forest was the phosphorous mainly occurring in organic form or iron bound. In streams mainly surrounded by agriculture on clay soils was the phosphorous to a large extent calcium bound. The results were recently published in Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences (Lannergård et al. 2020).
The online magazine EOS has highlighted this new study. EOS is published by the organization AGU (American Geophysical Union) and presents new research in earth and planetary sciences.
Lannergård et al. 2020: Lannergård, E. E., Agstam-Norlin, O.,Huser, B. J., Sandström, S., Rakovic, J.,& Futter, M. N. (2020). New insightsinto legacy phosphorus fromfractionation of streambed sediment. Journal of Geophysical Research:Biogeosciences, 125, e2020JG005763. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JG005763