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Geologic Sources of Sulphur at Dargall Lane (Galloway, Scotland)

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Abstract

Dargall Lane is an acidic stream draining a moorland catchment in the Galloway Hills of southwest Scotland. This area has been receiving high atmospheric loadings of sulphur. The Dargall Lane catchment is underlain by a greywacke-shale sequence and by intrusive rocks of granodioritic-tonalitic composition. The shales have a sulphur concentration in the range 0.04–0.19 wt.%, whereas mudstones, greywackes and grandiorites rarely exceed 0.02 wt.% S.

Calculations based on bedrock chemical composition, typical denudation rates of sedimentary and intrusive rocks, and the composition of surface water during baseflow, indicate that geogenic sulphur may account for a significant fraction of the sulphate hydrochemical budget. Sulphur mobilised by rock weathering of black shales is likely to be an important contributing factor causing the observed lack of a significant sulphate decrease in sulfate water despite the reported 30% reduction of sulphate in atmospheric precipitation during the past decade.

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    L. Giusti

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Giusti, L. Geologic Sources of Sulphur at Dargall Lane (Galloway, Scotland). Water, Air, & Soil Pollution 110, 239–254 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005011929448

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