Geochemical and isotopic study of abiotic nitrite reduction coupled to biologically produced Fe(II) oxidation in marine environments

Abstract

Estuarine sediments are often characterized by abundant iron oxides, organic matter, and anthropogenic nitrogen compounds (e.g., nitrate and nitrite). Anoxic dissimilatory iron reducing bacteria (e.g., Shewanella loihica) are ubiquitous in these environments where they can catalyze the reduction of Fe(III) (oxyhydr)oxides, thereby releasing aqueous Fe(II). The biologically produced Fe(II) can later reduce nitrite to form nitrous oxide. The effect on nitrite reduction by both biologically produced and artificially amended Fe(II) was examined experimentally. Ferrihydrite was reduced by Shewanella loihica in a batch reaction with an anoxic synthetic sea water medium. Some of the Fe(II) released by S. loihica adsorbed onto ferrihydrite, which was involved in the transformation of ferrihydrite to magnetite. In a second set of experiments with identical medium, no microorganism was present, instead, Fe(II) was amended. The amount of solid-bound Fe(II) in the experiments with bioproduced Fe(II) increased the rate of abiotic NO2− reduction with respect to that with synthetic Fe(II), yielding half-lives of 0.07 and 0.47 d, respectively. The δ18O and δ15N of NO2− was measured through time for both the abiotic and innoculated experiments. The ratio of ε18O/ε15N was 0.6 for the abiotic experiments and 3.1 when NO2− was reduced by S. loihica, thus indicating two different mechanisms for the NO2− reduction. Notably, there is a wide range of the ε18O/ε15N values in the literature for abiotic and biotic NO2− reduction, as such, the use of this ratio to distinguish between reduction mechanisms in natural systems should be taken with caution. Therefore, we suggest an additional constraint to identify the mechanisms (i.e. abiotic/biotic) controlling NO2− reduction in natural settings through the correlation of δ15N-NO2- and the aqueous Fe(II) concentration.