A new study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows per-area greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s water reservoirs are around 29% higher than suggested by previous studies, but that practical measures could be taken to help reduce that impact.

John Harrison.
Harrison

Led by John Harrison, a professor in the WSU Vancouver School of the Environment, and co-authored by colleagues at the University of Quebec at Montreal, the study is the first to include methane degassing in its estimate of global greenhouse gas emissions from manmade reservoirs. The research team also factored in numerous other unaccounted for variables into their analysis such as water temperature, water depth and the amount of sediment entering into thousands of different reservoirs located around the world. Previous studies that calculated overall greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs relied solely on average emission rates per reservoir surface area.

“While a number of papers have pointed out the importance of aquatic systems as sources of methane to the atmosphere, this is the first paper that I know of to look explicitly at which kinds of reservoirs are big sources and why,” Harrison said. “It gives us the ability to start working toward understanding what we could do about methane emissions from these types of systems.”

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