Kenneth Fortino edited ResultsOMMineralization.tex  over 7 years ago

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The sediments added to the microcosms in the leached litter SOD experiment had median dry bulk density of 0.17 g ml\textsuperscript{-1}. The organic matter content of the sediments was more variable than was seen in the previous experiments, where one of the samples had only 7.2\% organic matter and the other 2 samples had 16.7 and 16.5\% organic matter. The sediments in this experiment contained between 4.07 and 4.24 g of organic matter per microcosm. The microcosms that received leaf litter each received between 0.04 and 0.07 g of coarse organic matter which would be the equivalent of 11.5 to 21.0 g of coarse organic matter m\textsuperscript{-2}.  \subsubsection{Comparison to Pond Sediments}  In the lake from which the sediments were collected we measured between 57.3 and 163.0 g coarse organic matter m\textsuperscript{-2}, so the microcosms used in the experiment contained at most 40\% of the coarse organic matter of the lake. However in the microcosms all of the leaf litter was added to the surface of the sediments, while a portion of the leaf litter in the lakes was buried within the sediment.  \subsubsection{Dissolved Oxygen and Sediment Oxygen Demand}  In the litter experiment the dissolved oxygen concentration of the overlying water in the bottles ranged from 80.09 to 275.80 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} L\textsuperscript{-1} with a median of 224.80 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} L\textsuperscript{-1}. The dissolved oxygen concentration varied significantly over the course of the incubation (p < 0.0001) and was the lowest on the initial day of the incubation (Fig. \ref{fig:DO_days}). Additionally, the bottles containing leaf litter had significantly lower dissolved oxygen concentrations (p = 0.002) but this was only evident on day 0 and day 2 of the incubation (Fig. \ref{fig:DO_days}).  During the litter experiment the temperature ranged between 23.4 and 25.5\textsuperscript{o} C and the oxygen consumption of the bottles ranged between 357 and 2098 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} m\textsuperscript{-2} h\textsuperscript{-1}, with a median flux of 920 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} m\textsuperscript{-2} h\textsuperscript{-1}. Since the treatments with added leaf litter had more organic matter in the sediments than those without leaf litter, we normalized the oxygen flux to the estimated organic matter content of the sediments in the bottles. The organic matter normalized oxygen flux ranged from 7.34 to 42.54 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} (g organic matter)\textsuperscript{-1} h\textsuperscript{-1}, with a median flux of 18.97 $\mu mols$ O\textsubscript{2} (g organic matter)\textsuperscript{-1} h\textsuperscript{-1}.