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On-line fluorometry of multiple reactive and conservative tracers in streams

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Abstract

Performing tracer tests using artificial tracer compounds is a common practice to characterize natural streams regarding their (reactive) transport properties. Recently, the fluorescent compound resazurin was introduced as a reactive stream tracer to quantify hyporheic exchange and metabolic activity of streams. This tracer, together with its reaction product resorufin and a conservative tracer (in our case fluorescein), provides additional information about transport properties of the stream and its hyporheic zone and can therefore overcome restrictions that are commonly affiliated with the use of conservative tracers alone. However, all previously published studies using this tracer system were based on manual sampling of the water. This usually limits the number of measurements and thus the achievable temporal resolution, and potentially endangers data quality due to inadequate handling of samples. In this paper, a modified version of the GGUN-FL30 on-line fluorometer is presented in which the optics have been modified to allow measuring the concentrations of all three tracers simultaneously at intervals of 10 s. Experiments under controlled and natural conditions showed that the performance of the on-line fluorometer regarding tracer separation efficiency and practical detection limits is comparable to a high-performance laboratory spectrofluorometer. Furthermore, suggestions are given on how to correct tracer signal fluctuations caused by temporal changes in temperature and pH that might occur during a field tracer test.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Roy Haggerty at Oregon State University for his advice on the resazurin/resorufin tracer system. This work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg (AZ Zu 33-721.3-2), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig (UFZ), and the National Science Foundation grant EAR 08-38338 to Roy Haggerty at Oregon State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. WESS, Water and Earth System Science Competence Cluster, c/o University of Tübingen, Hölderlinstr. 12, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Dennis Lemke, Marc Schwientek & Karsten Osenbrück

  2. Center for Applied Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Hölderlinstr. 12, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Dennis Lemke & Olaf A. Cirpka

  3. Albillia Sàrl, Rue de l’Evole 13, 2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Pierre-André Schnegg

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  1. Dennis Lemke
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  2. Pierre-André Schnegg
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  4. Karsten Osenbrück
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  5. Olaf A. Cirpka
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Correspondence to Dennis Lemke.

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Lemke, D., Schnegg, PA., Schwientek, M. et al. On-line fluorometry of multiple reactive and conservative tracers in streams. Environ Earth Sci 69, 349–358 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2305-3

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