The importance of the diffusive permeability of animal burrow linings in determining marine sediment chemistry.

Many of the abundant burrows formed by animals in marine sediments are lined with thin layers of organic material. The permeability of these linings to solute diffusion can be an important determinant of the chemical composition of surrounding sediment and the burrow habitat. The permeability of linings can affect sedimentary solution distributions differently depending on the types of reactions controlling a particular solute in surrounding sediment. The concentrations of solutes subject to zeroth-order reactions are greatly influenced by lining permeability but net fluxes (at steady state) across the lining are not. The opposite is true for solutes subject to first or higher order concentration-dependent reactions. Assuming burrow linings can act as molecular sieves, then some classes of solutes will be strongly influenced by the presence of irrigated burrows while others will be distributed in a deposit as though burrows were completely absent. This may greatly complicate sedimentary solute distributions.-from AuthorDept. of the Geophysical Sci., Univ. of Chicago, 5734 S Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, USA.