Evidence for fungal and chemodenitrification based N2O flux from nitrogen impacted coastal sediments

Scott D. Wankel (), Wiebke Ziebis (), Carolyn Buchwald, Chawalit Charoenpong, Dirk de Beer, Jane Dentinger, Zhenjiang Xu and Karsten Zengler
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Scott D. Wankel: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Wiebke Ziebis: University of Southern California
Carolyn Buchwald: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Chawalit Charoenpong: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dirk de Beer: Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Jane Dentinger: University of Southern California
Zhenjiang Xu: University of California
Karsten Zengler: University of California

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Although increasing atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) has been linked to nitrogen loading, predicting emissions remains difficult, in part due to challenges in disentangling diverse N2O production pathways. As coastal ecosystems are especially impacted by elevated nitrogen, we investigated controls on N2O production mechanisms in intertidal sediments using novel isotopic approaches and microsensors in flow-through incubations. Here we show that during incubations with elevated nitrate, increased N2O fluxes are not mediated by direct bacterial activity, but instead are largely catalysed by fungal denitrification and/or abiotic reactions (e.g., chemodenitrification). Results of these incubations shed new light on nitrogen cycling complexity and possible factors underlying variability of N2O fluxes, driven in part by fungal respiration and/or iron redox cycling. As both processes exhibit N2O yields typically far greater than direct bacterial production, these results emphasize their possibly substantial, yet widely overlooked, role in N2O fluxes, especially in redox-dynamic sediments of coastal ecosystems.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15595

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