Publications by authors named "Rolf Russow"

Denitrification is well known being the most important nitrate-consuming process in water-logged peat soils, whereby the intermediate compound nitrous oxide (N(2)O) and the end product dinitrogen (N(2)) are ultimately released. The present study was aimed at evaluating the release of these gases (due to denitrification) from a nutrient-poor transition bog ecosystem under drained and three differently rewetted conditions at the field scale using a (15)N-tracer approach ([(15)N]nitrate application, 30 kg N ha(-1)) and a common closed-chamber technique. The drained site is characterized by a constant water table (WT) of -30 cm (here referred to as D30), while rewetted sites represent a constant WT of -15 cm, a constant WT of 0 cm (i.

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The nitrogen (N) cycle consists of a variety of microbial processes. These processes often occur simultaneously in soils, but respond differently to local environmental conditions due to process-specific biochemical restrictions (e.g.

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Under natural conditions, peatlands are generally nitrate-limited. However, recent concerns about an additional N input into peatlands by atmospheric N deposition have highlighted the risk of an increased denitrification activity and hence the likelihood of a rise of emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the turnover of added nitrate in a drained and a rewetted peatland using a [(15)N]nitrate-bromide double-tracer method.

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To determine the 13C abundance of combustion and break down products formed in cigarette smoke, especially CO and CO2, a simple and fast analytical method is needed. Taking into account the knowledge about the determination of the natural 13C abundance in air, an online method - based on gas chromatography-reaction-continuous flow mass spectrometry (GC-R-CF-MS) - has been developed, which enables the determination of the 13C abundance of CO and CO2 in the vapour phase of cigarette smoke with a relative standard deviation of< or =0.5% in one analytical run.

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On the basis of the principle of reaction continuous-flow quadrupole mass spectrometry, an automated sample preparation unit for inorganic nitrogen (SPIN) species was developed and coupled to a quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (MAS). The SPINMAS technique was designed for an automated, sensitive, and rapid determination of 15N abundance and concentration of a wide variety of N-species involved in nitrogen cycling (e.g.

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Estuaries have been suggested to have an important role in reducing the nitrogen load transported to the sea. We measured denitrification rates in six estuaries of the northern Baltic Sea. Four of them were river mouths in the Bothnian Bay (northern Gulf of Bothnia), and two were estuary bays, one in the Archipelago Sea (southern Gulf of Bothnia) and the other in the Gulf of Finland.

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N2 is one of the major gaseous nitrogen compounds released by soils due to N-transformation processes. Since it is also the major constituent of the earth's atmosphere (78.08% vol.

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Biological soil crusts are important cryptogamic communities covering the sand dunes of the north-western Negev. The biological crusts contain cyanobacteria and other free-living N(2)-fixing bacteria and are hence able to fix atmospheric nitrogen (N). This is why they are considered to be one of the main N input pathways into the desert ecosystem.

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The fates of the labels from [14C] and [15N] trinitrotoluene were analyzed in bioreactors under aerobic conditions in soil treated by a fungal bioremediation process with Stropharia rugosoannulata and in control soil. Up to 17.5% of the 15N label had a different fate than the 14C label.

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The variation of the natural 15N abundance is often used to evaluate the origin of nitrogen or the pathways of N input into ecosystems. We tried to use this approach to assess the main input pathways of nitrogen into the sand dune area of the north-western Negev Desert (Israel). The following two pathways are the main sources for nitrogen input into the system: i.

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