Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bowen, J. L., Giblin, A. E., Murphy, A. E., Bulseco, A. N., Deegan, L. A., Johnson, D. S., Nelson, J. A., Mozdzer, T. J., & Sullivan, H. L. Not all nitrogen is created equal: differential effects of nitrate and ammonium enrichment in coastal wetlands. Bioscience, 70(12), (2020): 1108-1119, doi:10.1093/biosci/biaa140.
Description:
Excess reactive nitrogen (N) flows from agricultural, suburban, and urban systems to coasts, where it causes eutrophication. Coastal wetlands take up some of this N, thereby ameliorating the impacts on nearshore waters. Although the consequences of N on coastal wetlands have been extensively studied, the effect of the specific form of N is not often considered. Both oxidized N forms (nitrate, NO3−) and reduced forms (ammonium, NH4+) can relieve nutrient limitation and increase primary production. However, unlike NH4+, NO3− can also be used as an electron acceptor for microbial respiration. We present results demonstrating that, in salt marshes, microbes use NO3− to support organic matter decomposition and primary production is less stimulated than when enriched with reduced N. Understanding how different forms of N mediate the balance between primary production and decomposition is essential for managing coastal wetlands as N enrichment and sea level rise continue to assail our coasts.
Description:
This work was supported by the following funding sources: National Science Foundation (NSF) grant no. DEB 1902712 to LAD, JLB, DSJ, and TJM; NSF grant no. DEB 1902695 to AEG; NSF grant no. DEB 1902704 to JAN; NSF grant no. DEB 1354214 to TJM; NSF grant no. DEB 1350491 to JLB; NSF grant no. OCE 1637630 to AEG and LAD; and additional funding from the Dorr Foundation, the Department of the Interior Northeast Climate Science Center (grant no. DOI G12AC00001), and a Bullard Fellowship (Harvard University) to LAD and from the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering Gulf Research Program to JAN. Resources purchased with funds from the NSF Biological Field Stations and Marine Laboratories program (grant no. DBI 1722553, to Northeastern University) were used to generate the data for the manuscript. Initial conversations on the effects of nutrient enrichment in marshes with Scott Warren and Bruce Peterson were critical in informing the work described in the manuscript. Sam Kelsey and Jane Tucker contributed to much of the N cycling biogeochemistry; Caitlin Bauer, Frankie Leach, Paige Weber, Emily Geoghegan and Sophie Drew assisted with field work; and Joe Vineis assisted with metagenomic analysis. This is contribution 3941 from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The data were compiled from multiple published sources. Links to published data can be found here: https://pie-lter.ecosystems.mbl.edu/data. The sequence data used to derive figure 6 are publicly available on the MG-RAST website under project number mgp84173.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Permalink
