THE SOURCES AND TRANSPORT OF SR AND ND ISOTOPES IN THE BALTIC SEA

We have determined the concentration and isotopic composition of Sr and Nd in waters from the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is an intracontinental, stratified, brackish water, estuarine-like system, and the rivers emptying into it drain a suite of terranes ranging from Proterozoic-Archean in the north to Phanerozoic in the south. The sampled brackish waters range in salinity from seawater (SW) at 35.289 parts per thousand to a minimum of 2.460 parts per thousand at the surface in the innermost part of the Gulf of Bothnia. The Sr concentrations show generally conservative behavior, indicating a simple two-component mixing. However, small deviations (3-70 parts per thousand) from a perfect mixing line reveal that the imprints from rivers with different Sr concentrations are preserved in the blending. Strontium concentrations from a depth profile across the redoxcline in the Baltic proper indicate that vertical particle transport alters the Sr concentration in the water. Our estimated concentration of Sr in the average freshwater input to the Baltic is approximately 0.03 ppm, which is only about 0.4% of the SW concentration. The Sr isotopic data range from epsilon(Sr)(SW) = 0 in seawater to epsilon(Sr)BW(SW) = 7.8 in the least saline Baltic water (BW) sample in the Gulf of Bothnia. The isotopic composition of Sr versus 1/Sr in the Baltic Sea follows an almost perfect mixing line, which shows that seawater Sr is mixed with much more radiogenic components. Calculated end-member values of epsilon(Sr)*(SW) for each sample show that the riverine input into the Gulf of Bothnia has epsilon(Sr)*(SW) = 120-200 and 10-50 epsilon units in the Baltic proper. These values are in general agreement with direct measurements of river waters in each region. However, the calculated values in the Gulf of Bothnia are lower than the measured river water input in this region, which indicates the presence of less radiogenic Sr, presumably originating from the river waters draining the southern part of the basin which are partially transported northward and mixed with Sr from the Gulf of Bothnia rivers. The Nd concentration in the Baltic Sea is not conservative, varying between 5 and 45 ppt, with the highest concentrations in the bottom waters due to vertical particulate transport. A plot of epsilon(Nd)(0) in Baltic water yields a good correlation with the calculated freshwater end member epsilon(Sr)*(SW). The data show that it is possible to unravel the different freshwater sources into the Baltic and to identify the zones of particulate removal of both non-conservative species such as the REE and of quasi-conservative species such as Sr. The use of isotopic tracers in this estuarine environment may provide a much better insight into mixing and element transport. It should also be possible to trace lateral movements of freshwater inputs.