Nitrogen uptake kinetics and saltmarsh plant responses to global change

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Date
2018
Authors
Cott, Grace M.
Caplan, Joshua S.
Mozdzer, Thomas J.
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Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Published Version
10.1038/s41598-018-23349-8
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Abstract
Coastal wetlands are important carbon sinks globally, but their ability to store carbon hinges on their nitrogen (N) supply and N uptake dynamics of dominant plant species. In terrestrial ecosystems, uptake of nitrate (NO3-) and ammonium (NH4+) through roots can strongly influence N acquisition rates and their responses to environmental factors such as rising atmospheric CO2 and eutrophication. We examined the N-15 uptake kinetics of three dominant plant species in North American coastal wetlands (Spartina patens, C-4 grass; Phragmites australis, C-3 grass; Schoenoplectus americanus, C-3 sedge) under ambient and elevated CO2 conditions. We further related our results to the productivity response of these species in two long-term field experiments. S. patens had the greatest uptake rates for NO3- and NH4+ under ambient conditions, suggesting that N uptake kinetics may underlie its strong productivity response to N in the field. Elevated CO2 increased NH4+ and NO3- uptake rates for S. patens, but had negative effects on NO3- uptake rates in P. australis and no effects on S. americanus. We suggest that N uptake kinetics may explain differences in plant community composition in coastal wetlands and that CO2- induced shifts, in combination with N proliferation, could alter ecosystem-scale productivity patterns of saltmarshes globally.
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Keywords
Climate-change ecology , Ecophysiology , Plant physiology , Wetlands ecology
Citation
Cott, G. M., Caplan, J. S. and Mozdzer, T. J. (2018) 'Nitrogen uptake kinetics and saltmarsh plant responses to global change', Scientific Reports, 8(1), 5393 (10pp). doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-23349-8
Link to publisher’s version
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23349-8
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/5929
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Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences - Journal Articles
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© 2018, the Authors. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.