Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Volume 48, Issue 24, Pages 14178-14185Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/es503313t
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NSF Chemical Oceanography program [OCE- 0425061, OCE-0751525]
- NDSEG
- Estuarine Reserves Division, Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Groundwater is an important pathway for terrestrially derived nutrients to enter the coastal ocean. In coastal aquifers, groundwater transits the subterranean estuary, a region of sharp gradients in redox conditions and the availability of reactants. In one such system (Waquoit Bay, MA, USA), we observed more than a doubling of the groundwater-associated nitrogen flux to surface water during the summer compared to winter due primarily to a reduction in nitrogen attenuation within the subterranean estuary. Because marine groundwater intrusion has been shown to increase during the summer, we calculate a greater contribution of recycled nutrients from the coastal ocean to the subterranean estuary. We posit that the longer residence times within the subterranean estuary during the winter, which would result from reduced marine groundwater circulation, allow oxygen depletion of the groundwater, creating a favorable environment for important nutrient transformations such as nitrification, denitrification, and anammox. The timing of nutrient delivery to the coastal ocean has important implications for coastal marine ecology including the potential development of harmful algal blooms.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available