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Differential decomposition of humic acids by marine and estuarine bacterial communities at varying salinities

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Abstract

Humic substances (HS) constitute 50–80% of total dissolved organic matter (DOM) in freshwaters but in the open ocean <3%, indicating that large fractions of DOM and HS are removed in the estuarine and coastal zone. In order to assess the role of bacteria in this removal, we conducted experiments in flow-through cultures to examine the decomposition of peat bog-born humic acids (HA) by marine (salinity 30, Exp1) and estuarine (salinity 10, Exp2) bacterial communities. After ~70 days 40–>60% of the HA were decomposed. Highest fractions were decomposed in treatments in which the bacterial communities were fed by HA media of a foreign salinity, e.g., of 14 in Exp1 and of 28 in Exp2. Some of the HA material was not decomposed but broken down to smaller moieties entering the fulvic acid (FA) fraction. The analysis of the HA media and their residuals after bacterial decomposition by pyrolysis GC/MS showed that individual organic compounds were decomposed. In Exp1, 32 aliphatic and aromatic compounds, including lignin biomarkers, were detected in the HA medium of which mainly aliphatic compounds were decomposed. In Exp2, 49 compounds were detected of which ~40–60% were not detected any more after bacterial decomposition in the HA fraction but still in the FA fraction. The results show that estuarine and marine bacterial communities can decompose large amounts of HA and that this process is important in reducing the amount of terrestrial HS and DOM entering the estuarine and coastal region.

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Acknowledgments

We are most grateful to A. Schlingloff for DOC analyses. We thank B. Kuerzel for help with the flow cytometric analyses of bacterial numbers and to H. Simon for assistance in sample collection. This work was supported by grant Si 360/22-1 from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). V. Kisand was supported by the European Regional Development Fund through the Center of Excellence in Chemical Biology, Estonia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), University of Oldenburg, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany

    Dagmar Rocker, Barbara Scholz-Böttcher, Andreas Lemke, Jürgen Rullkötter & Meinhard Simon

  2. Institute of Technology, University of Tartu, Nooruse 1, 50411, Tartu, Estonia

    Veljo Kisand

  3. Institute of Mathematics, University of Oldenburg, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany

    Thomas Kneib

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  1. Dagmar Rocker
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Correspondence to Meinhard Simon.

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Rocker, D., Kisand, V., Scholz-Böttcher, B. et al. Differential decomposition of humic acids by marine and estuarine bacterial communities at varying salinities. Biogeochemistry 111, 331–346 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-011-9653-4

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