Data from water column and sediment incubations from streams of Duck Creek and Fox River watersheds in Wisconsin, as well as the Fox rivermouth, the Saginaw rivermouth (Lake Huron, MI) and the Maumee rivermouth (Lake Erie, OH)

Nutrient reduction on the landscape scale often focuses on actions that reduce the movement of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from agricultural lands into streams and rivers. However, processing of N and P in streams and rivers can be substantial and increasing these in-stream processing rates could result in reductions or transformations of nutrients to less labile or less mobile forms. We hypothesize that buffer conditions could influence the microbial community and sediment characteristics of streams and rivers and thereby influence in-stream N and P processing rates. As a result, we predict that variation in buffer land cover (from agricultural to wetlands to forest) causes differences in processing rates. To test this prediction, we measured inorganic nutrient transformation in the water column and sediment flux of inorganic N and P in streams draining predominantly agricultural landscapes in the Fox River and Duck Creek watersheds (WI, USA) repeatedly during the 2018 growing season.