Journal
CONTINENTAL SHELF RESEARCH
Volume 200, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.csr.2020.104112
Keywords
Aquatic sediments; Sediment aggregates; Flocs; Multiscale imaging; 2D and 3D correlative microscopy
Categories
Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Queen Mary University of London Postgraduate Research Fund
- Natural Environmental Research Council [NE/N011678/1]
- NERC [NE/N011678/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Suspended cohesive sediments form aggregates or 'flocs' and are often closely associated with carbon, nutrients, pathogens and pollutants, which makes understanding their composition, transport and fate highly desirable. Accurate prediction of floc behaviour requires the quantification of 3-dimensional (3D) properties (size, shape and internal structure) that span several scales (i.e. nanometre [nm] to millimetre [mm]-scale). Traditional techniques (optical cameras and electron microscopy [EM]), however, can only provide 2-dimensional (2D) simplifications of 3D floc geometries. Additionally, the existence of a resolution gap between conventional optical microscopy (COM) and transmission EM (TEM) prevents an understanding of how floc nm-scale constituents and internal structure influence mm-scale floc properties. Here, we develop a novel correlative imaging workflow combining 3D X-ray micro-computed tomography (mu CT), 3D focused ion beam nanotomography (FIB-nt) and 2D scanning EM (SEM) and TEM (STEM) which allows us to stabilise, visualise and quantify the composition and multi-scale structure of sediment flocs for the first time. This new technique allowed the quantification of 3D floc geometries, the identification of individual floc components (e.g., clays, non-clay minerals and bacteria), and characterisation of particle-particle and structural associations across scales. This novel dataset demonstrates the truly complex structure of natural flocs at multiple scales. The integration of multi scale, state-of-the-art instrumentation/techniques offers the potential to generate fundamental new understanding of floc composition, structure and behaviour.
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