ALBERT

Description: Gross gains and losses of stream water and the consequent hydrologic turnover may modify the composition of stream water and drive in‐stream ecological functioning. We evaluated over 500 breakthrough curves of conservative tracer additions to analyze the channel water balance resulting in gross gains and losses, net exchange, and hydrologic turnover. During the hydrological year 2019, seven tracer experiments had been carried out in six first‐order streams along 400 m study reaches. All streams are located in the Holtemme catchment (Central Germany) with three each dominated by forested and agricultural land use. Four of the six streams were characterized by net‐losing conditions. The overall median of gross exchange was five times higher than net exchange. On average, subsurface gains replaced 50% of the original stream water over less than one kilometer of stream length. We even observed cases where over 95% of the stream water turned over within 100 m. Gross exchange was relatively higher in forested than in agricultural streams. Patterns of exchange in the forested streams persisted spatially and were temporally independent of streamflow, whereas in the agricultural ones, variable spatial patterns and streamflow dependence occurred. Overall, moderate flow coincided with highest relative gross exchange. Our results support previous findings that in‐stream solute concentrations could heavily depend on location and magnitude of gains and losses. Gross exchange embodies a permanent but variable control of downstream solute concentrations interacting with the signal of biogeochemical activity. We highlight the importance to include reach‐scale hydrological processes in studies on nutrient spiraling.

Description: Plain Language Summary: The vitality of stream ecosystems largely relies on the exchange of water between surface and groundwater. This comprises all gains and losses of stream water from and to the subsurface and is referred to as gross exchange. We investigated gross exchange for six headwater streams in the Holtemme catchment (Central Germany) during the hydrological year 2019. By applying salt tracer experiments we calculated the extent of exchange. Consistently, the investigated stream reaches lost more water than they gained. On average, half of the stream water was replaced by newly added groundwater along less than one km of stream length and, in few cases, almost the entire volume was exchanged within 100 m distance. Streams surrounded by forest exchanged more water than streams in agricultural landscapes. The location and direction of exchange remained similar in the forested streams, but varied temporarily for the agricultural streams. We could show that groundwater represents an important volume of our streams and that the true gross exchange can easily be underestimated if only the sum of gains and losses is measured. Therefore, solute concentrations can be strongly modified by gross exchange, which is important to better understand the transport of solutes in streams.

Description: Key Points: In over 90% of the cases, gross exchange equals five times the net exchange, which impacts interpretations of nutrient uptake. Gross exchange and hydrologic turnover show spatiotemporal patterns persisting over discharge at forested, but not at agricultural sites. Moderate discharge exhibits the highest relative gross exchange.

Description: Apatite is a ubiquitous phase in granite plutons and in most adjacent country rocks, thus contamination of a granite magma with wall-rock material results in two genetic types of apatite in the magma: cognate and foreign. These two textural and chemical varieties of apatite undergo textural and compositional changes to reach physical and chemical equilibrium (perfect assimilation) in the melt. Our experiments replicate the conditions in such contaminated granites. The starting materials consist of a peraluminous synthetic SiO2-Al2O3-Na2O-K2O (SANK 1.3) granite gel with A/NK of 1.3, synthetic F-apatite, synthetic Cl-apatite, and natural Durango apatite. Initial experiments in cold-seal hydrothermal pressure vessels at magmatically realistic temperatures of 750 °C and pressures of 200 MPa produced negligible reactions, even after run times of 2000 h. Instead, we used an argon-pressurized internally heated pressure vessel with a rapid-quench setup at temperatures of 1200 °C, pressure of 200 MPa, and run durations of 192 h. An advantage of this high temperature is that it exceeds the liquidus for quartz and feldspar; therefore, apatite is the only solid phase in the run products. The starting composition of each run was 90 wt% SANK 1.3 granite gel and 10 wt% crushed apatite (consisting of one, two, or three varieties), with and without 4 wt% added H2O. Run products were examined by SEM for texture and by EMPA and LA-ICP-MS for composition. The starting synthetic granite composition contains no Ca, F, Cl, or REEs thus, in every run, apatite was initially undersaturated in the melt. In all experiments, most large apatite grains consisted of anhedral shards with rounded corners, most small apatite grains were round, and a small proportion of apatite grains developed one or more crystal faces. In experiments with two or three apatite compositions, the run-product apatite grains had compositions intermediate between those of the starting-material grains, and they were homogeneous with respect to Cl, and probably F, but not with respect to REEs. The processes to reach textural equilibrium consist of dissolution until the melt is saturated in apatite, followed by Ostwald ripening to eliminate small grains and to develop crystal faces on larger ones. The processes to reach chemical equilibrium consist of dissolution of apatite, diffusion of cations (Ca, P, REE) and anions (F, Cl, OH) through the silicate melt, and solid-state diffusion in the undissolved apatite grains. The halogens approached chemical equilibrium in all experiments, but in the experiments containing Durango apatite, the REEs have not. Models involving radial diffusion into spherical apatite grains at the temperatures of the experiments show complete re-equilibration of the halogens, but changes in the REE concentrations affecting only the outer few micrometers. We conclude that the rate of chemical equilibrium for the halogens is greater than the rate of physical equilibrium for texture, which in turn is greater the rate of chemical equilibrium for REEs. We illustrate these processes with a natural example of contaminated granite from the South Mountain Batholith in Nova Scotia. Given that all granites are contaminated rocks, we propose that future petrogenetic studies focus on developing techniques for a minerals-based quantitative estimation of contamination (QEC).