Emissions of porewater compounds and gases from the subaquatic sediment disposal site “rodewischhafen”, hamburg harbour

In the year 1993 a confined and unused harbour basin was used to store 290,000 m3 of fine-grained dredged material from Hamburg harbour. About 70% of the deposit surface was water covered. The edge areas were above the water table and covered with reed. Emissions of dissolved compounds into the groundwater, as well as surface gas emissions were measured from 1994 to 1996. As indicators for water fluxes from the deposit we used NH4+ and HCO3− because of their high concentrations in mud porewater in comparison to groundwater. The average concentrations of NH4+ and HCO3− in the porewater increased during 2 years from 85 to 250 mg NH4+ 1−1 and from 2.0 to 3.1 g HCO3− 1−1, while the groundwater samples showed constant values of 8 mg NH4+ 1−1 and 0.7 g HCO3− 1−1. Furthermore, the average gas emissions over the water surface were 3.2 g CH4 m−2 d−1 and 0.8 g CO2 m−2 d−1. In contrast, no methane and 3.0 g CO2 m−2 d−1 were emitted from land areas. The results indicated, that there were no significant emissions of mud porewater compounds into the groundwater but high CH4-emissions over the water covered surface of the mud deposit.