BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 225 IHSS&IWA26 / BRNO / CZECHIA / 23–28 August 2026 Hall A Poster Session / Environment, Agriculture, and Forestry P4.7 Exploring Beneficial Use of Dredged Material for Agriculture and Wetland Reconstruction: Comparing Soil Organic Matter in Dredged Material and Farm Soil with Humeomics and PARAFAC Katarina Kieffer1, Angelica Vasquez-Ortega2, Marios Drosos3, Samira Rifat Prova4, Shikshya Gautam5 1 Bowling Green State University, School of Earth, Environment, and Society, 190 Overman Hall, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA, kekieff@bgsu.edu 2 Bowling Green State University, School of Earth, Environment, and Society 3 University of Basilicata, Department of Agricultural, Forest, Food, and Environmental Sciences 4 West Virginia University 5 Bowling Green State University, Department of Biological Sciences The Laurentian Great Lakes in the United States hold approximately 20% of the world’s surface freshwater, with Lake Erie being the most biologically productive and most impacted by anthropogenic influence. The watershed of the Western Lake Erie Basin (WLEB) is dominated by intensive agriculture, negatively affecting soil health, including loss of nutrients and degradation of soil structure. Due to extensive destruction of natural wetlands and nutrient pollution and sediment loss from agriculture, the WLEB has faced increased harmful algal blooms and downstream sediment accumulation. To keep shipping channels clear, Toledo Harbor is dredged annually, and the removed dredged material (DM) must be stored. The storage capacity is limited, and finding beneficial uses for DM is a high priority. Using DM as an agricultural amendment and as a substrate for reconstructed wetlands has been proposed. Previous research on Toledo Harbor DM found agronomically ideal levels of Ca, organic carbon (OC), and cation exchange capacity, as well as increased yield and root development in crops grown in DM as compared to farm soil (FS). Differences in the quality of soil organic matter (SOM) could offer an explanatory mechanism. For this study, Toledo Harbor DM and a Northwest Ohio FS were qualitatively and quantitatively characterized and compared after progressive organic extraction with the humeomics method. Extracted fractions were characterized for relevant nutrients (OC, TN, TP), and FTIR was used to assess functional groups. EEM-PARAFAC was used to calculate the humification index, fluorescence index, model components, and compare relative intensity of SOM composition between FS and DM fractions. Significant differences were found between DM and FS in terms of where nutrients were concentrated in the SOM structure,
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