Constraining nitrogen sources to a seagrass-dominated coastal embayment by using an isotope mass balance approach
Douglas G. Russell A , Adam J. Kessler
A B , Wei Wen Wong A , Dick Van Oevelen C and Perran L. M. Cook A *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Water Studies Centre, School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia.
B School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia.
C Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ-Yerseke), Yerseke, Netherlands.
Marine and Freshwater Research 73(5) 703-709 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF21320
Submitted: 9 November 2021 Accepted: 17 January 2022 Published: 25 February 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Nitrogen (N) is often the key nutrient limiting primary production in coastal waters. Quantifying sources and sinks of N is therefore critical to understanding the factors that underpin the productivity of coastal ecosystems. Constraining nitrogen inputs can be difficult for some terms such as N fixation and marine exchange as a consequence of uncertainties associated with scaling and stochasticity. To help overcome these issues, we undertook a N budget incorporating an isotope and mass balance to constrain N sources in a large oligotrophic coastal embayment (Western Port, Australia). The total N input to Western Port was calculated to be 1400 Mg N year−1, which is remarkably consistent with previous estimates of sedimentation rates within the system. Catchment inputs, N fixation, marine sources and atmospheric deposition comprised 44, 28, 28 and 13% of N inputs respectively. Retention of marine-derived N equated to ~3 and ~10% of total N and NOx flushed through the system from the marine end-member. The relatively high contribution of N fixation compared with previous studies was most likely to be due to the high proportion of nutrient-limited intertidal sediments where N is mediated by seagrasses and sediment cyanobacteria.
Keywords: 15N, denitrification, isotope, nitrogen, nitrogen budget, nitrogen fixation, seagrass, tidal flat.
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