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Updated: Aug 13, 2025
Laboratory-determined Phosphorus Flux from Lake Sediments as a Measure of Internal Phosphorus Loading
Published on: March 6, 2014
Response of internal phosphorus loading from dredged and inactivated sediment under repeated resuspension in a
Chunhui Yang1, Guoxiang Wang2, Hongbin Yin3
1School of Environment, School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China; State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
Abstract:
In this study, a laboratory sediment resuspension simulation system (RSS) was used to investigate the effect of wind-induced (5.3 and 8.7 m/s) repeated sediment resuspension on internal phosphorus (P) in sediment treated by dredging and La-modified clay (LMC) based inactivation in a shallow lake. The results indicated that the dredged sediment had a better capability to resist repeated wind disturbance than the LMC-inactivated sediment. The concentration of suspended solids (SS) in the inactivated treatment (70.7 mg/L) was 1.7 times that in the dredged treatment (41.7 mg/L) under moderate wind disturbance, and was similar for the two treatments under strong wind disturbance. Nevertheless, dredging performed better than inactivation in reducing 44 % total phosphorus (TP) in overlying water (43 % reduction by inactivation) and 31 % mobile P in sediment (27 % reduction by inactivation) under moderate wind disturbance (p < 0.01) compared with control treatment. Inactivation performed better in reducing 57 % P in porewater (52 % reduction by dredging) and 81 % P flux (13 % reduction by dredging) (p < 0.01) compared with control treatment. Surprisingly, under strong wind disturbance, LMC inactivation could still reduce 18 % P in porewater and 75 % P flux (p < 0.01), whereas dredging increased 25 % P in porewater and 13 % P flux compared with control treatment (p < 0.01). LMC inactivation can increase the sediment P adsorption capacity and decrease the equilibrium P concentration (EPC0) when compared with control treatment. The contrasting control effects of the two methods were probably due to the different P buffer mechanisms for the two treated sediment. The wind disturbance-induced sediment P release was controlled by the inactivation of Fe and co-inactivation of Fe and La at the surface of dredged and LMC-inactivated sediments, respectively. The results of this study indicated inactivation can be a better method to control sediment internal P loading with repeated strong wind disturbances in eutrophic lakes.
