Abstract
Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) by moss-associated cyanobacteria may represent up to 30% of the total nitrogen (N) input in unfertilized boreal forests. It remains difficult, however, to obtain reliable estimates of BNF at the landscape scale due to high spatial variability of BNF at lower scales where it is usually measured. Here we identify moss color, more specifically its “greenness”, as a predictor of this spatial variability. We show that BNF in yellow stems fix at least twice as much as green ones of the same species. These results are coherent with the C:N ratio of the moss and their purported ability to attract cyanobacteria when N deficient. We also show that the response differs markedly across different moss species. We conclude that the accuracy of ecosystem level N budgets may be improved by accounting for the relative proportion of green and yellow moss patches.
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