Title:

Large scale analysis of nitrogen and carbon coupling across eco-regions

Carbon and nitrogen cycles are often tightly coupled due to the limiting nature of nitrogen for carbon retention and assimilation by plants. Different environmental factors, like climate and plant composition affect cycling of both elements whereas environmental disturbances ranging from storm events to fires to seasonal changes can lead to the decoupling of both cycles. The strength of carbon and nitrogen coupling varies between eco-regions and environmental gradients, however the relative influence of different environmental variables of this coupling is not as well understood. This project aims to determine how different environmental factors influence carbon and nitrogen coupling across a variety of sites across the United States. This project combines data on stream nitrogen export from over twenty NEON aquatic sites with eddy covariance and precipitation data from paired terrestrial sites to calculate a watershed level carbon and nitrogen mass balances, indicating their retention or loss from the system. Preliminary analyses presented here focus on the relationship between annual average nitrogen export and mass balance compared to more static variables including plant and soil C:N ratio, nitrogen mineralization rates, and mean annual precipitation and temperature. These results highlight large scale patterns in nitrogen fluxes that should be mirrored by carbon fluxes where the cycles are tightly coupled.

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