Laboratory study of nitrogen and phosphorus remineralization during the decomposition of coastal plankton and seston |
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| Authors: | Jonathan H Garber |
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| Institution: | Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island 02881, USA |
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| Abstract: | The decomposition of cultured marine phytoplankton (Skeletonema costatum) and natural estuarine seston from Narragansett Bay, RI, was studied at two temperatures (8°C and 18°C) in bottles containing sterile bay-water (30‰) and in bay-water with micro-organisms small enough to pass through a glass fibre filter (nominally < 1μ). About 50% of the particulate organic nitrogen (PON) and particulate phosphorus (PP) was immediately released to the water in dissolved organic forms from both types of organic matter. Comparison of changes in the dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) fraction in the sterile and non-sterile systems indicated that nearly all of the DON initially released was subsequently remineralized. Ammonification proceeded only in non-sterile bay-water. 20–25% of the PP was converted to dissolved inorganic-P (DIP) fraction after only 7 h in both sterile and non-sterile bay-water. Following autolytic releases of DON, DOP and DIP the initial rates of N and P remineralization were temperature dependent: Q10 values for PON and PP decay during first phase of microbially mediated decomposition ranged from 1·3 to 6·4. Rates of remineralization then slowed so that about equal amounts of nutrients were remineralized (45–50% of the N and 57–60% of the P in the phytoplankton and 60–63% of the N and 36–60% of the P in the natural seston) after 30 days storage at either temperature. During 30 days of decomposition in non-sterile seawater the N/P ratios in the dissolved inorganic fractions converged on the ratios of total-N/total-P initially present in the bottles. Kinetic analysis of the decay of total organic-N (TON) and total organic-P (TOP) in the non-sterile systems and analysis of similar sets found in the literature showed that the initial stages of the decomposition of N and P from planktonic POM in vitro could be modelled as the sequential decay, at first-order rates, of two particulate fractions. The first, more labile, fraction comprised about 60% of the particulate N and P. First-order rate constants (−k, base e) for decomposition during the 1st and 2nd phases were 0·02 to 0·2 day−1 and 0·003 to 0·02 day−1, respectively. The decay rates are far too slow to account for the ‘rapid in situ recycling’ of nutrients needed to support phytoplankton production when other means of nutrient resupply (by advection, fixation, rainfall, etc.) are very low. |
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| Keywords: | mineralization regeneration nutrients decomposition plankton seston estuaries |
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