Evaluation of salt marsh hydrology using radium as a tracer

Radium isotopes provide unique and important information concerning water exchange in a salt marsh-tidal creek system. Seasonal radium data collected over five tidal cycles from a creek draining a South Carolina salt marsh, radium and thorium data from the adjacent marsh sediments and interstitial water radium data from the drainage basin are modeled to yield residence times of water in the upper 10 cm of the marsh sediments ranging from less than one to twenty-six hours. Water residence times derived from chambers which directly measure the flux of Ra isotopes to the creek waters agree well with these calculated interstitial water turnover times. Dissolved radium activities in the tidal creek were greater during the summer than during other times of the year. We suspect that seasonal changes in the storage of organic carbon and rates of bioturbation lead to net reduction of radium carrier phases in the marsh sediments during the summer.