New insights into sea ice nitrogen biogeochemical dynamics from the nitrogen isotopes

We report nitrogen (N) isotopic measurements of nitrate, total dissolved nitrogen, and particulate nitrogen from Antarctic pack ice in early and late spring. Salinity-normalized concentrations of total fixed N are approximately twofold higher than in seawater, indicating that sea ice exchanges fixed N with seawater after its formation. The production of low-N-15 immobile organic matter by partial nitrate assimilation and the subsequent loss of high-N-15 nitrate during brine convection lowers the N-15 of total fixed N relative to the winter-supplied nitrate. The effect of incomplete nitrate consumption in sea ice is thus similar to that in the summertime surface ocean, but the degree of nitrate consumption is greater in ice, leading to a higher N-15 for organic N (similar to 3.9) than in the open Antarctic Zone (similar to 0.6). Relative to previous findings of very high-N-15 organic matter in sea ice (up to 41), this study indicates that it would be difficult for sea ice to explain the high N-15 of ice age Antarctic sediments. The partitioning of N isotopes between particulate and dissolved forms of reduced N suggests that primary production evolved from new to regenerated production from early to late spring. Even though nitrate assimilation raises the N-15 of nitrate, the N-15 of sea ice nitrate is frequently lower than that of seawater, providing direct evidence that the regeneration of reduced N in the ice includes nitrification, with mass and isotopic balances suggesting that nitrification supplies a substantial fraction (up to similar to 70%) of nitrate assimilated within Antarctic spring sea ice.