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High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems

Coastal methane (CH(4)) emissions dominate the global ocean CH(4) budget and can offset the “blue carbon” storage capacity of vegetated coastal ecosystems. However, current estimates lack systematic, high‐resolution, and long‐term data from these intrinsically heterogeneous environments, making coas...

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Autores principales: Roth, Florian, Sun, Xiaole, Geibel, Marc C., Prytherch, John, Brüchert, Volker, Bonaglia, Stefano, Broman, Elias, Nascimento, Francisco, Norkko, Alf, Humborg, Christoph
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9540812/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35340089
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16177
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author Roth, Florian
Sun, Xiaole
Geibel, Marc C.
Prytherch, John
Brüchert, Volker
Bonaglia, Stefano
Broman, Elias
Nascimento, Francisco
Norkko, Alf
Humborg, Christoph
author_facet Roth, Florian
Sun, Xiaole
Geibel, Marc C.
Prytherch, John
Brüchert, Volker
Bonaglia, Stefano
Broman, Elias
Nascimento, Francisco
Norkko, Alf
Humborg, Christoph
author_sort Roth, Florian
collection PubMed
description Coastal methane (CH(4)) emissions dominate the global ocean CH(4) budget and can offset the “blue carbon” storage capacity of vegetated coastal ecosystems. However, current estimates lack systematic, high‐resolution, and long‐term data from these intrinsically heterogeneous environments, making coastal budgets sensitive to statistical assumptions and uncertainties. Using continuous CH(4) concentrations, δ(13)C‐CH(4) values, and CH(4) sea–air fluxes across four seasons in three globally pervasive coastal habitats, we show that the CH(4) distribution is spatially patchy over meter‐scales and highly variable in time. Areas with mixed vegetation, macroalgae, and their surrounding sediments exhibited a spatiotemporal variability of surface water CH(4) concentrations ranging two orders of magnitude (i.e., 6–460 nM CH(4)) with habitat‐specific seasonal and diurnal patterns. We observed (1) δ(13)C‐CH(4) signatures that revealed habitat‐specific CH(4) production and consumption pathways, (2) daily peak concentration events that could change >100% within hours across all habitats, and (3) a high thermal sensitivity of the CH(4) distribution signified by apparent activation energies of ~1 eV that drove seasonal changes. Bootstrapping simulations show that scaling the CH(4) distribution from few samples involves large errors, and that ~50 concentration samples per day are needed to resolve the scale and drivers of the natural variability and improve the certainty of flux calculations by up to 70%. Finally, we identify northern temperate coastal habitats with mixed vegetation and macroalgae as understudied but seasonally relevant atmospheric CH(4) sources (i.e., releasing ≥ 100 μmol CH(4) m(−2) day(−1) in summer). Due to the large spatial and temporal heterogeneity of coastal environments, high‐resolution measurements will improve the reliability of CH(4) estimates and confine the habitat‐specific contribution to regional and global CH(4) budgets.
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spelling pubmed-95408122022-10-14 High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems Roth, Florian Sun, Xiaole Geibel, Marc C. Prytherch, John Brüchert, Volker Bonaglia, Stefano Broman, Elias Nascimento, Francisco Norkko, Alf Humborg, Christoph Glob Chang Biol Research Articles Coastal methane (CH(4)) emissions dominate the global ocean CH(4) budget and can offset the “blue carbon” storage capacity of vegetated coastal ecosystems. However, current estimates lack systematic, high‐resolution, and long‐term data from these intrinsically heterogeneous environments, making coastal budgets sensitive to statistical assumptions and uncertainties. Using continuous CH(4) concentrations, δ(13)C‐CH(4) values, and CH(4) sea–air fluxes across four seasons in three globally pervasive coastal habitats, we show that the CH(4) distribution is spatially patchy over meter‐scales and highly variable in time. Areas with mixed vegetation, macroalgae, and their surrounding sediments exhibited a spatiotemporal variability of surface water CH(4) concentrations ranging two orders of magnitude (i.e., 6–460 nM CH(4)) with habitat‐specific seasonal and diurnal patterns. We observed (1) δ(13)C‐CH(4) signatures that revealed habitat‐specific CH(4) production and consumption pathways, (2) daily peak concentration events that could change >100% within hours across all habitats, and (3) a high thermal sensitivity of the CH(4) distribution signified by apparent activation energies of ~1 eV that drove seasonal changes. Bootstrapping simulations show that scaling the CH(4) distribution from few samples involves large errors, and that ~50 concentration samples per day are needed to resolve the scale and drivers of the natural variability and improve the certainty of flux calculations by up to 70%. Finally, we identify northern temperate coastal habitats with mixed vegetation and macroalgae as understudied but seasonally relevant atmospheric CH(4) sources (i.e., releasing ≥ 100 μmol CH(4) m(−2) day(−1) in summer). Due to the large spatial and temporal heterogeneity of coastal environments, high‐resolution measurements will improve the reliability of CH(4) estimates and confine the habitat‐specific contribution to regional and global CH(4) budgets. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-04-12 2022-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9540812/ /pubmed/35340089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16177 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Roth, Florian
Sun, Xiaole
Geibel, Marc C.
Prytherch, John
Brüchert, Volker
Bonaglia, Stefano
Broman, Elias
Nascimento, Francisco
Norkko, Alf
Humborg, Christoph
High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title_full High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title_fullStr High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title_short High spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
title_sort high spatiotemporal variability of methane concentrations challenges estimates of emissions across vegetated coastal ecosystems
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9540812/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35340089
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16177
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