New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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An assessment of a simple spectrophotometric method for the determination of dissolved organic carbon in freshwaters

T. R. MOORE

Department of Geography McGill University 805 Sherbrooke St. W. Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6

Abstract The ability of absorbance at 330 nm to predict dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration was tested on samples of throughfall, stem-flow, soil water, and stream water from the Maimai and Larry River catchments, Westland, New Zealand. Predictive ability for the combined samples was poor, but improved when the samples were split into groups of origin. For stream samples, the method gave standard errors of the estimate of 8 to 11% of the mean. Predictive ability was poorer in the other sample groups, especially throughfall and stemflow, presumably because of the occurrence of weakly coloured organic compounds. The slope and intercept of the regressions varied with sample type. The spectrophotometric method is useful where a large number of samples need to be analysed and where calibrations can be developed for specified types of organic-carbon-rich waters.

Keywords absorbance; dissolved organic carbon, stream water; throughfall; stemflow; soil water

New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 1987, Vol. 21: 585-589 OO28-833O/87/21O4-O585$2.5O/O © Crown copyright 1987 Received 22 September 1986; accepted 16 January 1987

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (395K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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