Coastal zones connect terrestrial and marine ecosystems forming a unique environment that is under increasing anthropogenic pressure. Rising sea levels, sinking coasts, and changing precipitation patterns modify hydrodynamic gradients and may enhance sea-land exchange processes in both tidal and non-tidal systems. Furthermore, the removal of flood protection structures as restoration measure contributes locally to the changing coastlines. A detailed understanding of the ecosystem functioning of coastal zones and the interactions between connected terrestrial and marine ecosystems is still lacking. Here, we propose an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of interactions between land and sea at shallow coasts, and discuss the advantages and the first results provided by this approach as applied by the research training group Baltic TRANSCOAST. A low-lying fen peat site including the offshore shallow sea area on the southern Baltic Sea coast has been chosen as a model system to quantify hydrophysical, biogeochemical, sedimentological, and biological processes across the land-sea interface. Recently introduced rewetting measures might have enhanced submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) as indicated by distinct patterns of salinity gradients in the near shore sediments, making the coastal waters in front of the study site a mixing zone of fresh-and brackish water. High nutrient loadings,

Abstract. The rewetting of drained peatlands alters peat geochemistry and often leads to sustained elevated methane emission. Although this methane is produced entirely by microbial activity, the distribution and abundance of methane-cycling microbes in rewetted peatlands, especially in fens, is rarely described. In this study, we compare the community composition and abundance of methane-cycling microbes in relation to peat porewater geochemistry in two rewetted fens in northeastern Germany, a coastal brackish fen and a freshwater riparian fen, with known high methane fluxes. We utilized 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) on 16S rRNA, mcrA, and pmoA genes to determine microbial community composition and the abundance of total bacteria, methanogens, and methanotrophs. Electrical conductivity (EC) was more than 3 times higher in the coastal fen than in the riparian fen, averaging 5.3 and 1.5 mS cm−1, respectively. Porewater concentrations of terminal electron acceptors (TEAs) varied within and among the fens. This was also reflected in similarly high intra- and inter-site variations of microbial community composition. Despite these differences in environmental conditions and electron acceptor availability, we found a low abundance of methanotrophs and a high abundance of methanogens, represented in particular by Methanosaetaceae, in both fens. This suggests that rapid (re)establishment of methanogens and slow (re)establishment of methanotrophs contributes to prolonged increased methane emissions following rewetting.

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There have been widespread attempts to rewet peatlands in Europe and elsewhere in the world to restore their unique biodiversity as well as their important function as nutrient and carbon sinks. However, changes in hydrological regime and therefore oxygen availability likely alter the abundance of enzyme-inhibiting polyphenolic compounds, which have been suggested as a "latch" preventing large amounts of carbon from being released into the atmosphere by microbial mineralization. In recent years, a variety of factors have been identified that appear to weaken that latch including not only oxygen, but also pH. In minerotrophic fens, it is unknown if long-term peat mineralization during decades of drainage and intense agricultural use causes an enrichment or a decline of enzyme-inhibiting polyphenols. To address this, we collected peat samples and fresh roots of dominating plants (i.e., the peat parent material) from the upper 20 cm peat layer in 5 rewetted and 6 natural fens and quantified total phenolic content as well as hydrolysable and condensed tannins. Polyphenols from less decomposed peat and living roots served partly as an internal standard for polyphenol analysis and to run enzyme inhibition tests. As hypothesized, we found the polyphenol content in highly decomposed peat to be eight times lower than in less decomposed peat, while condensed tannin content was 50 times lower in highly degraded peat. In addition, plant tissue polyphenol contents differed strongly between peat-forming plant species, with the highest amount found in roots of Carex appropinquata at 450 mg g −1 dry mass, and lowest in Sphagnum spp. at 39 mg g −1 dry mass: a 10-fold difference. Despite large and clear differences in peat and porewater chemistry between natural and rewetted sites, enzyme activities determined with Fluorescein diacetate (FDA) hydrolysis and peat degradation were not significantly correlated, indicating no simple linear relationship between polyphenol content and microbial activity. Still, samples with low contents of polyphenols and condensed tannins showed the highest microbial activities as measured with FDA.

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