Robust measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are important for constraining GHG budgets at all scales, and for assessing climate feedbacks on natural fluxes to improve climate models. Freshwater environments have recently been recognized as considerable net sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) to the atmosphere. However, current data for aquatic GHG fluxes are far from robust and emission estimates often rely on measurements of surface water concentrations in combination with very simple models of the gas exchange coefficient (piston velocity; k). These models are highly uncertain since they are often developed in single systems but applied widely in very different systems without calibration.
This project aims to perform empirical measurements of k using different approaches and use the data to evaluate the approaches and suggest ways to improve GHG emission estimates from aquatic environments.
