Exchange resin cores for the estimation of nutrient fluxes in highly permeable tropical soil

There is an urgent need to improve the methods to estimate solute fluxes in soil, e.g. cumulative capture of leaching ions by exchange resin cores. We compared the suitability of different resin materials, core sizes, and installation procedures to assess nutrient leaching in a highly permeable, tropical Xanthic Ferralsol. Three different cation and anion resins, respectively, and two combined anion-cation resins were tested in laboratory experiments with respect to their removal and recovery of nutrients (Mg, NH₄⁺, NO₃^—) and total dissolved organic carbon (TOC) from solution. In a field experiment, cores with three different diameters (25, 100, and 200 mm) were installed either vertically from the soil surface or laterally from a soil pit. Cumulative leaching of NO₃^— and NH₄⁺ and of applied Sr was determined after 45 days. The combined anion and cation exchange resin (MB 20) showed satisfactory recovery of NO₃^— and NH₄⁺ from solution. None of the investigated resins could be used for TOC removal from solution due to high contents of soluble carbon compounds in the resins. Wetting and drying cycles did not affect the removal of solutes from solution or subsequent recovery from the MB 20 resin. Additionally, the combined resin MB 20 was easier to handle than separate anion or cation resins and was therefore used for further field experimentation. The smallest core size (25 mm) was not suitable for nutrient leaching determination due to high preferential flow along the inner core walls. The medium diameter cores (100 mm) showed the lowest variability and the best correlation between NO₃^— and Sr capture. They were easier to install and retrieve than the large diameter cores (200 mm), which posed serious handling problems and soil disturbance. The lateral installation caused significantly lower artificial flow in comparison to a vertical installation, which was shown by the lower Sr loss and slightly lower N capture. Therefore, a lateral installation of medium sized resin cores (100 mm diameter) from a soil pit was superior to the other alternatives tested in this study.