Carbon Isotope Fractionation Effects During Degradation of Methyl Halides in Agricultural Soils

Fumigation of agricultural soils prior to planting row crops constitutes the largest anthropogenic source of methyl bromide (MeBr) to the atmosphere. Typically, more than 60% of the MeBr added is lost to the atmosphere during the 5-6 day fumigation period. The remainder is oxidized by bacteria or otherwise degraded in the soil. In experiments using washed cells of methylotrophic bacteria isolated from agricultural soil (strain IMB-1), oxidation of MeBr, methyl chloride (MeCl) and methyl iodide to CO₂ resulted in large (up to 70‰ ) fractionation of stable carbon isotopes (Miller, et al. 2001). By contrast, fractionation measured in field soils using both in situ techniques and bottle incubations with MeBr was less than 35‰ . This discrepancy was initially attributed to the large transportation losses that occur without isotopic fractionation during field fumigation. However, this rationale cannot explain why bottle incubations with soil resulted in lower fractionation factors than incubations with bacterial cultures. We conducted additional laboratory bottle experiments to examine the biological and chemical controls of carbon isotope fractionation during degradation of MeBr and MeCl by soils and bacteria. Soils were collected from a strawberry field in Santa Cruz County, California within two weeks of the start of each experiment. The rate of removal of methyl halides from the headspace was greatest during incubations at soil moisture contents around 8%. Increasing the amount of soil and hence native bacteria in each bottle minimized the lag in uptake by up to several days. No lag was observed during incubations of soils with added IMB-1. Stable isotope fractionation factors were similar for degradation by live soil and live soil with added IMB-1. Heat-killed controls of cell cultures showed little uptake (<10% over 5 days) and no isotope fractionation. Heat-killed soil controls, by contrast, demonstrated significant loss of MeBr (20-30%) with isotope fractionation factors comparable to live soil. Loss of MeCl during the same time was lower (<10%) however isotope fractionation was comparable to live soil. Our results indicate that bacterial oxidation in soil rapidly consumes methyl halides but only partly controls the fractionation of carbon isotopes. Two chemical processes also act to remove MeBr in soil, hydrolysis and nucleophilic exchange with Cl^-, both of which result in fractionation of carbon isotopes. Hydrolysis does not remove MeCl. It seems likely that fractionation in soil could result from a combination of biological and chemical processes, but since they all have sizeable fractionation factors associated with the removal of methyl halides, the relative rate of each process may not be as important as the total amount of methyl halide degraded. Attempts to constrain our understanding of atmospheric methyl halide budgets using stable isotope signatures of sources and sinks will have to rely on this type of information regarding the net isotopic impact of methyl halide uptake by soils. Miller, L.G., Kalin, R.M., McCauley, S.E., Hamilton, J.T.G., Harper, D.B., Millet, D.B., Oremland, R.S., and Goldstein, A.H. (2001) Large carbon isotope fractionation associated with oxidation of methyl halides by methylotrophic bacteria, PNAS, vol. 98, 5833-5837.