Specific surface areas in coastal sediments: Relationships with other textural factors

Abstract Sediment specific surface area can be a controlling variable in sediment biogeochemistry, therefore a variety of granulometric techniques have been employed to infer relative and absolute surface areas in sediments. This study compares specific surface areas with other textural parameters for a suite of aluminosilicate sediments from the Gulf of Maine and contiguous estuaries. The intragranular porosity of sediment grains increases with grain size, and is probably due to varying relative contributions of nanometer and micrometer-sized pores. Poor sorting of sediments causes underestimation of absolute surface areas by geometrical calculation using measures of central tendency. Underestimation is worse in coarser estuarine sediments owing to a combination of increased roughness factors of coarser grains and poorer sorting. Relative surface areas among sediments may be accurately assessed by measuring the proportion clay or fine silt. Means and medians do not provide accurate estimation of relative surface areas unless the samples share similar sorting characteristics. An algorithm to predict absolute surface areas from grain-size distributions of Gulf of Maine sediments is presented.

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