Carbon and nitrogen turnover during an in situ experiment with addition of Thalassiosira sp. and E. huxleyi phytodetritus at AWI-HAUSGARTEN S2 in 2013

This is a dataset from an in situ experiment at station S2 from the LTER monitoring site HAUSGARTEN, performed in June-July 2013 during Maria S Merian expedition MSM29. The in situ responses of Arctic deep-sea benthos to input of phytodetritus of a diatom (Thalassiosira sp.) as opposed to a coccolithophorid (Emiliania huxleyi) were investigated in incubation chambers of benthic landers. Using 13C and 15N labelled phytodetritus harvested from cultures of these species, we traced the fate of the respective phytodetritus into different parts of the food web (respiration, assimilation by bacteria and infauna >250 µm), in a short (4d) and long (14d) term experiment. The benthic landers were lowered to the sea floor, where they enclosed ~ 20cm of sediment and ~10 cm of overlying water. During respectively 4d and 14d, the temperature and concentrations of O2, DIC, 13C-DIC, NHx, NOx, 15N-NH4, 15N-NOx were measured. Upon recovery of the landers, the sediment was retrieved and subsampled in vertical horizons to measure pigment, TOC and TN, 13C-POC and 15N-PN concentrations, pore water concentrations of DIC, 13C-DIC, NHx, NOx, 15N-NH4 and 15N-NOx and the assimilation of 13C in bacterial fatty acids (iC15:0 and aiC15:0) and in fauna > 250 µm