Marine gradients of halogens in moss studies by epithermal neutron activation analysis

INAA is known to be a powerful technique for the simultaneous determination of chlorine, bromine and iodine. In this paper INAA using epithermal neutrons is shown to be particularly useful to elucidate marine gradients of these elements. Examples are from a transect study in northern Norway where samples of the feather moss Hylocomium splendens were collected at distances of 0-300 km from the coastline. All three elements decrease exponentially as a function of distance from the ocean in the moss samples, strongly indicating that the atmospheric supply from the marine environment is the predominant source of these elements to the terrestrial ecosystem. It is suggested that environmental studies of halogens in general and iodine in particular is a promising future area of application for INAA, when employing epithermal neutrons. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.