Variations of bioavailable Sr concentration and⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio in boreal forest ecosystems

Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in different environmental samples — Effects of anthropogenic contamination and implications for isoscapes in past migration studies

“…This difference is the same order of magnitude as that documented between bamboo grass and oaks in Japan (Nakano et al, 2001), and is slightly lower than that found between plantlet/young and mature trees in Belgium (Drouet et al, 2005a). Furthermore, the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr of the exchangeable Sr often varies between soil horizons (Drouet et al, 2007;Poszwa et al, 2002Poszwa et al, , 2004, as also indicated by the soil core data presented here, and thus plant-assimilated 87 Sr/ 86 Sr may vary according to rooting depth (Nakano et al, 2001; this study). The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr of a soil profile depends, among other parameters (see Pett-Ridge et al, 2009), on the weathering of the parent material (Drouet et al, 2007).…”

“…4). Several studies have compared soil and plant 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios from the same locations (Blum et al, 2000;Evans and Tatham, 2004;Hodell et al, 2004;Nakano et al, 2001;Pett-Ridge et al, 2009;Poszwa et al, 2004). However, in those studies, the soil-exchangeable cations were obtained using various chemical reagents, which hampers direct comparison with our results -here we simply used MilliQ water.…”

“…As a result, snail shell 87 Sr/ 86 Sr are usually biased towards values for soil carbonates, which also seems to be the case for the snail shells analyzed in this study. Together, these observations strongly suggest that snail shells are unsuitable for providing accurate estimates of biosphere 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. Sr/ 86 Sr that ends up in vegetation ultimately results from weathering of bedrock, as well as atmospheric deposition of material from outside the region (Åberg et al, 1989;Graustein and Armstrong, 1983;Nakano et al, 2001;Poszwa et al, 2004). As nutrient assimilation by the plant from the soil is affected by plant anatomy (root systems) as well as plant physiology (e.g., Sr cycling), which vary according to the species of plant (Poszwa et al, 2004), it is not altogether surprising to observe Sr/ 86 Sr between that of ground vegetation and that found in tree leaves.…”

“…Together, these observations strongly suggest that snail shells are unsuitable for providing accurate estimates of biosphere 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. Sr/ 86 Sr that ends up in vegetation ultimately results from weathering of bedrock, as well as atmospheric deposition of material from outside the region (Åberg et al, 1989;Graustein and Armstrong, 1983;Nakano et al, 2001;Poszwa et al, 2004). As nutrient assimilation by the plant from the soil is affected by plant anatomy (root systems) as well as plant physiology (e.g., Sr cycling), which vary according to the species of plant (Poszwa et al, 2004), it is not altogether surprising to observe Sr/ 86 Sr between that of ground vegetation and that found in tree leaves. This difference is the same order of magnitude as that documented between bamboo grass and oaks in Japan (Nakano et al, 2001), and is slightly lower than that found between plantlet/young and mature trees in Belgium (Drouet et al, 2005a).…”

“…Over the past decade, strontium (Sr) isotope analysis has become an increasingly powerful tool in present-day and past animal ecology, for determining habitat use and mobility/migration (Blum et al, 2001;Britton et al, 2011;Feranec et al, 2007;Hoppe et al, 1999;Hoppe and Koch, 2007;Radloff et al, 2010;Tütken et al, 2011), in tracing food provenance (Almeida and Vasconcelos, 2001;Barbaste et al, 2002;Fortunato et al, 2004;Montgomery et al, 2006;Swoboda et al, 2008;Techer et al, 2011;Voerkelius et al, 2010), in hydrological and forest ecosystem investigations (Böhlke and Horan, 2000;Dijkstra et al, 2003;Drouet et al, 2005bDrouet et al, , 2007Poszwa et al, 2004;Shand et al, 2009), as well as in forensic sciences (Beard and Johnson, 2000;Juarez, 2008).…”