Manganese (Mn) contamination of drinking water may cause aesthetic and human health problems when concentrations exceed 50 and 500 ?g l?1, respectively. In the UK, the majority of Mn-related drinking water supply failures originate from unpolluted upland catchments. The source of Mn is therefore soil, but the exact mechanisms by which it is mobilised into surface waters remain unknown. Elevated Mn concentrations in surface waters have been associated with the rewetting of dried upland soils and with conifer afforestation. We investigated these hypotheses in a laboratory experiment involving the drying and rewetting of intact soil cores (1,900 cm3 volume) of horizons of four representative soil type-land use combinations from an upland [...]