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Benthic incubation chambers for estimating nitrogen flux at the sediment water interface
Citation:
Dantin, D., J. Harvey, R. Fulford, M. Russell, A. Almario, I. Krauss, AND K. Murphy. Benthic incubation chambers for estimating nitrogen flux at the sediment water interface. CERF 2015, Portland, OR, November 08 - 12, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
EPA’s SHC research program seeks to better understand how ecosystem functions produce ecosystem goods and services in order to develop quantitative tools for informing sustainability decisions. Data from the field portion of this work will be used to develop a nitrogen budget for the total area covered by various habitat types in the PBSRS system.
Description:
USEPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) research program seeks to better understand how ecosystem functions produce ecosystem goods and services (EGS) in order to develop quantitative tools for informing decisions that lead to more sustainable results. Our incomplete understanding of what physiological and morphological biometrics need to be measured limits our ability to determine loss of EGS production associated with changes in seagrasses or other near coastal habitats. The functional equivalency (FE) of estuarine habitats needs to be quantified if we are to better inform habitat restoration efforts. Functional investigations of nutrient cycling in estuarine habitats have been limited to mechanistic studies such as the description of microbial-root interactions. To broaden our understanding, a case study involving the role of seagrass in the cycling and sequestration of nitrogen and carbon in the Pensacola Bay-Santa Rosa Sound (PBSR) system is being planned at USEPA’s Gulf Ecology Division, Gulf Breeze, FL. During scoping for this work, we are assessing the ability of an in-situ chamber technique (Eyre et al. 2011) for measuring nitrogen cycling in specific habitat types (e.g., seagrass vs. open sand bottom) within PBSR. Here we present the initial efforts of this research with the design and early results from the use of benthic chambers for estimating nitrogen flux at the sediment water interface to establish habitat specific values. Data from the field portion of this work will be used to develop a nitrogen budget for the total area covered by various habitat types in the PBSR system. These nitrogen budgets will allow us to estimate the relative importance of each habitat type to nitrogen cycling. It is anticipated that the FE focused methodology developed here will help to better define thresholds in EGS production from ecosystem components that contribute to the production and delivery of EGS to humans.