Abstract
Sediment respiration, a key function of the lotic ecosystem, can be determined by various methods at different scales; a method used commonly is percolation columns. Sediments are often homogenised before measuring their respiration, to obtain a representative sample. This study aimed at determining whether homogenisation influences sediment respiration measured with percolation columns. Sediment cores from sandy streams with either grassland or forested riparian vegetation were placed undisturbed in columns and percolated for 85 h in winter and late spring. After 45.75 h, half of the columns were homogenised. Independent of origin and respiration rates, homogenisation did not influence the sediment respiration. This suggests that if sediment homogenisation is performed, it will not influence sediment respiration determined with percolation columns.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to R. Ender, J. Krahl and L. Zipfel for their help with laboratory and field work and to M. Mutz, U. Risse-Buhl and V. K. Notay for the suggestions that improved the manuscript. This study was part of the Transregional Collaborative Research Center 38 (SFB/TRR 38), which was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Bonn, Germany), Brandenburg Ministry of Science, Research and Culture (MWFK, Potsdam, Germany), and Basque Country Government (Spain; doctoral grant BFI 09.338). I thank Vattenfall Europe Mining AG for providing the sampling site CC.
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Handling Editor: Qinglong Wu.
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Mendoza-Lera, C. Does homogenisation of stream bed sediment samples influence their respiration?. Limnology 19, 165–169 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-017-0531-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-017-0531-1