15.11.2021: Wolfang WANEK (Wien) Natural 15N abundance applications in terrestrial biogeochemistry and plant ecophysiologie, HS 31.11, Institut für Biologie, Bereich für Pflanzenwissenschaften, Schubertstraße 51, 17:00 Uhr.
Humanity, especially in the last 100 years, has massively affected the global nitrogen cycle through combustion processes (traffic, industry, biomass combustion) and the use of fertilizers in agriculture. This has led to a global increase in the inputs of reactive nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere and into the biosphere, even in places remote from human activity, with consequences such as acid rain, eutrophication on land and in water, species losses, and contributions to global warming due to increasing N2O emissions. A better understanding of how these interventions influence the global nitrogen cycle and feedbacks on other element cycles and the climate is therefore of the utmost importance, as is the impact on the physiology of plants. In this lecture I will talk about recent work on the controls of important plant nitrogen assimilation processes and microbial processes in the soil nitrogen cycle, based on stable isotope measurements and the application and modeling of isotope fractionation of different nitrogen transformation processes. Innovative applications in the area of 15N isotope tracing (e.g. HONO emission sources) are also briefly presented.