Plant controls over tropical wetland nitrous oxide dynamics: a review

Abstract

Tropical wetlands are an important global source of greenhouse gas emissions, including nitrous oxide, a potent and long-last greenhouse gas. Tropical wetland ecosystems can be highly heterogeneous, featuring a variety of vegetation types, from grasses through to palms and mangroves. A variety of plant-mediated processes can exert key controls over wetland plant/soil nitrogen transportation and transformations, including through litter inputs, rhizodeposition and root turnover regulating the size of the soil nitrogen pool, plant nitrogen uptake, rhizosphere biology, and plant-mediated nitrous oxide transportation all playing important roles, and in many cases varying between key wetland vegetation types. In this review, we summarise the importance of such processes in regulating tropical wetland nitrous oxide dynamics.