Coupled molecular and isotopic evidence for denitrifier controls over terrestrial nitrogen availability.

Denitrification removes ecologically available nitrogen (N) from the biosphere and influences both the pace and magnitude of global climate change. Disagreements exist over the degree to which this microbial process influences N-availability patterns across Earth's ecosystems. We combine natural stable isotope methods with qPCR to investigate how denitrifier gene abundance is related to variations in nitrate (NO) pool sizes across diverse terrestrial biomes and conditions. We analyze NO isotope composition (N/N, O/O) and denitrifier gene nirS in 52 soil samples from different California ecosystems, spanning desert, chaparral, oak-woodland/savanna and forest. δN-NO correlates positively with δO-NO (P⩽0.03) and nirS abundance (P=0.00002) across sites, revealing the widespread importance of isotopic discrimination by soil denitrifiers. Furthermore, NO concentrations correlate negatively to nirS (P=0.002) and δN-NO (P=0.003) across sites. We also observe these spatial relationships in short-term (7-day), in situ soil-incubation experiments; NO-depletion strongly corresponds with increased nirS, nirS/16 rRNA, and enrichment of heavy NO isotopes over time. Overall, these findings suggest that microbial denitrification can consume plant-available NO to low levels at multiple time scales, contributing to N-limitation patterns across sites, particularly in moist, carbon-rich soils. Furthermore, our study provides a new approach for understanding the relationships between microbial gene abundance and terrestrial ecosystem functioning.