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Half of global methane emissions come from highly variable aquatic ecosystem sources
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Half of global methane emissions come from highly variable aquatic ecosystem sources

Judith A Rosentreter, Borges Alberto V, Deemer Bridget R, Holgerson Meredith A, Liu Shaoda, Song Chunlin, Melack John, Raymond Peter A, Duarte Carlos M, Allen George H, …
Nature Geoscience, Vol.14(4), pp.225-230
01/04/2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00715-2
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Half of global methane emissions come from highly variable aquatic ecosystem sourcesView
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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#13 Climate Action
#14 Life Below Water

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Abstract

Methane Climate Ecosystems Methane emissions Fresh water Environmental changes Eutrophication Aquatic environment Inland water environment Greenhouse effect Sampling designs Skewed distributions Freshwater ecosystems Fluxes Land use management Greenhouse gases Methane in the atmosphere Empirical analysis Land use Anthropogenic factors Emissions Mitigation Climate change Biogeochemistry Urbanization Aquatic ecosystems
Atmospheric methane is a potent greenhouse gas that plays a major role in controlling the Earth’s climate. The causes of the renewed increase of methane concentration since 2007 are uncertain given the multiple sources and complex biogeochemistry. Here, we present a metadata analysis of methane fluxes from all major natural, impacted and human-made aquatic ecosystems. Our revised bottom-up global aquatic methane emissions combine diffusive, ebullitive and/or plant-mediated fluxes from 15 aquatic ecosystems. We emphasize the high variability of methane fluxes within and between aquatic ecosystems and a positively skewed distribution of empirical data, making global estimates sensitive to statistical assumptions and sampling design. We find aquatic ecosystems contribute (median) 41% or (mean) 53% of total global methane emissions from anthropogenic and natural sources. We show that methane emissions increase from natural to impacted aquatic ecosystems and from coastal to freshwater ecosystems. We argue that aquatic emissions will probably increase due to urbanization, eutrophication and positive climate feedbacks and suggest changes in land-use management as potential mitigation strategies to reduce aquatic methane emissions. Methane emissions from aquatic systems contribute approximately half of global methane emissions, according to meta-analysis of natural, impacted and human-made aquatic ecosystems and indicating potential mitigation strategies to reduce emissions.

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