Vertical activity distribution of dissimilatory nitrate reduction in coastal marine sediments

Abstract. The relative importance of two dissimilatory nitrate reduction pathways, denitrification (DEN) and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA), was investigated in intact sediment cores from five different coastal marine field sites. The vertical distribution of DEN activity was examined using the acetylene inhibition technique combined with N2O microsensor measurements, whereas NH4+ production via DNRA was measured with a recently developed gel probe-stable isotope technique. At all field sites, dissimilatory nitrate reduction was clearly dominated by DEN (> 59% of the total NO3− reduced) rather than by DNRA, irrespective of the sedimentary inventories of electron donors such as organic carbon, sulfide, and iron. Ammonium production via DNRA (8.9% of the total NO3− reduced) was exclusively found at one site with very high concentrations of total sulfide and NH4+ in the layer of NO3− reduction and below. Sediment from two field sites, one with and one without DNRA activity in the core incubations, was also used for slurry incubations. Now, in both sediments high DNRA activity was detected accounting for 37–77% of the total NO3− reduced. These contradictory results can be explained by enhanced NO3− availability for DNRA bacteria in the sediment slurries compared to the core-incubated sediments. It can be argued that the gel probe technique gives more realistic estimates of DNRA activity in diffusion-dominated sediments, while slurry incubations are more suitable for advection-dominated sediments.