Mass physical sediment properties

Abstract

Unfortunately, dimensional misrepresentations of the type outlined in this contribution pervade the scientific literature (cf. Flemming and Delafontaine, 2000), such errors having found their way into models (e.g., Paarlberg et al., 2005; Borsje et al., 2008), manuals (e.g., Gray and Elliot, 2009), and environmental guidelines and directives (e.g., Bjørgesæter and Gray, 2008). On the other hand, since the content versus concentration issue was raised by Flemming and Delafontaine (2000), an increasing number of investigations and textbooks have recognized the need to switch to volumetric units for intercompari-sons of sedimentary abiotic and biotic parameters (e.g., Perkins et al., 2003; Köster et al., 2005; Tolhurst et al., 2005; Jesus et al., 2006; Chapman and Tolhurst, 2007; Tolhurst et al., 2008; Giere, 2009; Leipe et al., 2011; Adams et al., 2012; Kenny and Sotheran, 2013). This has led to sometimes surprising interpretations and questions which would otherwise have remained obscure. Meeting such challenges will be greatly facilitated by recent progress in the development of remote sensing and other instrumentation for the in situ appraisal of mass physical sediment properties at various spatial scales (e.g., de Groot et al., 2009; Jacobs et al., 2009; Ha et al., 2010; Barry et al., 2012; L’Esperance et al., 2013).