Together with water vapour and carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) is an important greenhouse gas, because of its strong global warming potential of 23×CO2 on a 100year time scale. The atmospheric mixing ratio of CH4 has increased with 151 ± 25%, since pre-industrial times. About 60% of the global CH4 emission is of antropogenous origin. From the natural sources (wetlands, termites, oceans, CH4...

[1] Despite considerable research, large uncertainties exist in the various area-scales budgets of CH4 flux between soils and the atmosphere. We postulated that small wetlands greatly contribute to the CH4 budget in semiarid regions, where wetland contributions are often assumed to be insignificant. To test this hypothesis, small riparian mires of the Xilin River basin in Inner Mongolia were se...

Understanding the dynamics of methane (CH4 ) emissions is of paramount importance because CH4 has 25 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and is currently the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Wetlands are the single largest natural CH4 source with median emissions from published studies of 164 Tg yr(-1) , which is about a third of total global emissions...

A 2-year field and incubation experiment was conducted to investigate δ(13)C during the processes of CH4 emission from the fields subjected to two water managements (flooding and drainage) in the winter fallow season, and further to estimate relative contribution of acetate to total methanogenesis (Fac ) and fraction of CH4 oxidized (Fox ) based on the isotopic data. Compared with flooding, dra...

The permafrost on the North Slope of Alaska is densely populated by shallow lakes that result from thermokarst erosion. These lakes release methane (CH4 ) derived from a combination of ancient thermogenic pools and contemporary biogenic production. Despite the potential importance of CH4 as a greenhouse gas, the contribution of biogenic CH4 production in arctic thermokarst lakes in Alaska is no...

The potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) is produced in the rumens of ruminant animals from hydrogen produced during microbial degradation of ingested feed. The natural animal-to-animal variation in the amount of CH4 emitted and the heritability of this trait offer a means for reducing CH4 emissions by selecting low-CH4 emitting animals for breeding. We demonstrate that differences in rumen micr...

The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is a global ground-based network of Fourier transform spectrometers that produce precise measurements of column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of atmospheric methane (CH4). Temporal variability in the total column of CH4 due to stratospheric dynamics obscures fluctuations and trends driven by tropospheric transport and local surface fluxes that...

The application of NH4+-based fertilizers is a common practice in rice production. The immediate effect of a late season urea application on the processes involved in CH4 emission from a rice field was investigated on sandy loam located in the valley of River Po at Vercelli, northern Italy, and planted with rice (Oryza sativa, type japonica, variety Koral). Urea, applied at a rate of 50 kg N ha...

From 2012 to 2015, we investigated methane (CH4) distribution, air−sea fluxes, and sediment−water fluxes in an aquaculture bay (Sanggou Bay, China), and estimated the input of CH4 from potential land sources including rivers and groundwater. Surface water CH4 in the bay ranged from 3.0 to 302 nM, while bottom CH4 was usually higher due to sediment release. Water column CH4 in summer and autumn ...

BACKGROUND Effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations on plant growth and associated C cycling have intensively been studied, but less is known about effects on the fluxes of radiatively active trace gases other than CO2. Net soil-atmosphere CH4 fluxes are determined by the balance of soil microbially-driven methane (CH4) oxidation and methanogenesis, and both might change under elevate...