Low water level drives high nitrous oxide emissions from treatment wetland.

Wetlands that are restored for carbon sequestration or created for water treatment are an important sources of greenhouse gases, especially methane. The emission of nitrous oxide (NO) from these systems is often considered negligible due to the inundation and anerobic conditions that support complete denitrification. We used closed chamber method to analyze NO fluxes over a long-term period across heterogeneous wetland ecosystem constructed for treating nitrate-rich agricultural runoff.

Restoring wetlands on intensive agricultural lands modifies nitrogen cycling microbial communities and reduces NO production potential.

The concentration of nitrous oxide (NO), an ozone-depleting greenhouse gas, is rapidly increasing in the atmosphere. Most atmospheric NO originates in terrestrial ecosystems, of which the majority can be attributed to microbial cycling of nitrogen in agricultural soils. Here, we demonstrate how the abundance of nitrogen cycling genes vary across intensively managed agricultural fields and adjacent restored wetlands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California, USA.