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Denitrification Dominates Sediment Nitrogen Removal and Is Enhanced by Bottom-Water Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

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Abstract

Nutrient loads from the Mississippi River watershed are associated with seasonal development of bottom-water hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Microbial nitrogen (N) transformations at the sediment-water interface are important in determining system productivity and the development and maintenance of hypoxia. Intact sediment cores were incubated in a continuous-flow system with stable isotope tracers to identify and quantify important N sources (e.g., N fixation), sinks (e.g., denitrification and anammox), and links (e.g., dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium, DNRA). Microbial N sinks on the Louisiana-Texas continental shelf remove up to 68 % of the total N load from the Mississippi River watershed, and up to 29 % of this N removal (mean = 11.8 ± 1.7 %) may be due to anammox. The highest N2 production rates and ammonium effluxes were observed at low bottom-water oxygen concentrations, and sediments were a significant source of ammonium to the water column at all times. DNRA and heterotrophic N fixation were not consistent pathways for total sediment N fluxes, but their potential importance to N balance and productivity in the system warrants further study and inclusion in ecosystem models. Physical disturbance from passage of two hurricanes in 2008 resulted in lower N cycling rates and sediment oxygen consumption, with sediment processes migrating into the water column. Denitrification is the dominant N sink in the northern Gulf of Mexico and provides a valuable ecosystem service by mitigating N loads from the Mississippi River watershed, particularly during seasonal bottom-water hypoxia events.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the captain and crew of the R/V Pelican for assistance with sampling and cruise logistics, Peter Thomas and Ed Buskey for sharing ship time, Afonso Souza, Jiqing Liu, and Lin Xiao for assistance with core and overlying water sampling, Hou Lijun for the PEEK retrofitting, Rae Mooney for the site map, Bess Ward for microarray access and support to SEN, Zhanfei Liu and Nathaniel Ostrom for helpful discussions, Helen Baulch and Roxane Maranger for sharing N2O flux data, and Karen S. McNeal and her students for sharing oxygen and sulfide microelectrode data. We also thank Dubravko Justić and Il-Nam Kim for the surface area estimates of the continental shelf. This work was supported by Grant #NA07NOS4780225 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research to WSG, Grant #1240798 from the National Science Foundation-Dimensions in Biodiversity to WSG, and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to SEN.

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  1. Silvia E. Newell

    Present address: Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Wright State University, 263 Brehm Lab, Dayton, OH, 45435, USA

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  1. The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute, 750 Channelview Drive, Port Aransas, TX, 78373, USA

    Mark J. McCarthy, Stephen A. Carini & Wayne S. Gardner

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, 222 Guyot Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Silvia E. Newell

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Silvia E. Newell

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  1. Mark J. McCarthy
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McCarthy, M.J., Newell, S.E., Carini, S.A. et al. Denitrification Dominates Sediment Nitrogen Removal and Is Enhanced by Bottom-Water Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Estuaries and Coasts 38, 2279–2294 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-015-9964-0

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