The effect of sediment grain properties and porewater flow on microbial abundance and respiration in permeable sediments.

ABSTRACT: Sandy sediments cover 50-60% of the continental shelves and are highly efficient bioreactors in which organic carbon is remineralized and inorganic nitrogen is reduced to N₂. As such they seem to play an important role, buffering the open ocean from anthropogenic nitrogen inputs and likely remineralizing the vast amounts of organic matter formed in the highly productive surface waters. To date however, little is known about the interrelation between porewater transport, grain properties and microbial colonization and the consequences for remineralization rates in sandy sediments. To constrain the effect of theses factors on remineralization in silicate sands, we incubated North Sea sediments in flow-through reactors after separating into five different grain size fractions. Bulk

SUBMITTER: Ahmerkamp S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7046789 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature