Daily denitrification rates in floodplains under contrasting pedo-climatic and anthropogenic contexts: modelling at the watershed scale

Floodplains play a crucial role in water quality regulation via denitrification. This biogeochemical process reduces nitrate (NO 3 − ), with aquifer saturation, organic carbon (OC) and N availability as the main drivers. To accurately describe the denitrification in the floodplain, it is necessary to better understand nitrate fluxes that reach these natural bioreactors and the transformation that occurs in these surface areas at the watershed scale. At this scale, several approaches tried to simulate denitrification contribution to nitrogen dynamics in study sites. However, these studies did not consider OC fluxes influences, hydrological dynamics and temperature variations at a daily time step. This paper focuses on a new model that allows insights on nitrate, OC, discharge and temperature influences on daily denitrification for each water body. We used a process-based deterministic model to estimate daily alluvial denitrification in different watersheds showing various pedo-climatic conditions. To better understand global alluvial denitrification variability, we applied the method to three contrasting catchments: The Amazon for tropical zones, the Garonne as representative of the temperate climate and the Yenisei for cold rivers. The Amazon with a high discharge, frequent flooding and warm temperature, leads to aquifers saturation, and stable OC concentrations. Those conditions favour a significant loss of N by denitrification. In the Garonne River, the low OC delivery limits the denitrification process. While Arctic rivers have high OC exports, the low nitrate concentrations and cold temperature in the Yenisei River hinder denitrification. We found daily alluvial denitrification rates of 73.0 ± 6.2, 4.5 ± 1.4 and 0.7 ± 0.2 kgN ha −1 y −1 during the 2000–2010 period for the Amazon, the Garonne and the Yenisei respectively. This study quantifies the floodplains influence in the water quality regulation service, their contribution to rivers geochemical processes facing global changes and their role on nitrate and OC fluxes to the oceans.