Geochemical Fingerprinting - Application of Geochemical Tracers to Fluvial Sediment - page 24

Fig. 2.5 Summary of inverse/mixing model procedure utilized by Collins et al. ( 2012 , 2013 )and
others
involves the normalization of bulk concentrations (i.e., the concentration measured
on the total sediment sample) to account for differences in sediment geochemistry
related to particle size and mineralogy. The typical assumption is that certain con-
stituents (e.g., sand-sized sediment or quartz and feldspar grains) act to dilute the
concentration of elements associated with the more reactive materials (e.g., fine-
grained particles enriched in clay minerals, Fe and Mn oxides and hydroxides, and
organic matter). Thus, normalization removes the diluting effects of the non-reactive
constituents. Normalized concentration ( NC ) with respect to grain size, for example,