Considerations in modeling the sediment-water exchange of phosphorus

The potential to release accumulated phosphorus from sediments has been the major motive to study and to model the fate of this nutrient in sediments. For the dynamics of the sediment-water interaction the sizes of the pools involved and the rates of conversion/transport from one pool to another are of primary interest. As the sediment pools for phosphate are generally much larger than the pools in the water column, a rather slow adjustment of the sediment to management measures will occur. For the analysis of management measures it is obvious that the gradual change in sediment composition must be taken into account. Only for rather short periods the sediment composition can be assumed to be constant; this may be appropriate for studies of e.g. the annual cycle. The sediment-water interaction is a complex resultant of physical, chemical and biological processes, including:

physical processes: advection due to seepage or consolidation, pore-water diffusion, transport and mixing of solids by resuspension, sedimentation and bioturbation.

chemical processes: adsorption and desorption, dissolution and (co)precipitation, inclusion.

biological processes: mineralization of a wide range of organic compounds by various (micro)organisms, each with their own nutrient requirements and electron acceptors.

Aspects which are discussed and need to be considered in application of a model in research or management are the level of aggregation and detail that is required and may still be practical, the spatial and temporal scales which are applicable for the processes mentioned and their influence upon the numerical dispersion and model stability, the availability of data for calibration/validation and the resolution of the analytical techniques. These aspects are not independent however. Frequently models are not functional because they contain details which are either unnecessary or suggest a feigned accuracy which is not justified by analytical and experimental resolution of system characteristics.