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Contribution of Methane Formation and Methane Oxidation to Methane Emission from Freshwater Systems

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Biogenesis of Hydrocarbons

Part of the book series: Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology ((HHLM))

Abstract

Lakes and reservoirs have been only in the early twenty-first century identified to be main methane emitters to the atmosphere (Bastviken et al., Glob Biogeochem Cycles 18:1–12, 2004; St. Louis et al., Bioscience 50:766–775, 2000). With an estimated yearly amount of 12–29.6 Tg CH4 for reservoirs (Deemer et al., Bioscience 66:949–964, 2016) and up to 71.6 Tg CH4 for lakes (Bastviken et al., Science 331:50–50, 2011), they represent up to 10% of total methane emissions and hence have to be taken into account in global budgets. Freshwater systems are emitting more methane than oceans although only covering about 3% of the earth surface since methanogenesis, the building process of methane, is the main organic matter degradation step compared to oceans where sulfate reduction is dominant. Reservoirs in comparison to lakes have two additional methane release mechanisms, which are loss from methane-rich hypolimnion waters at the turbine and then degassing in the river to which the turbined water has been released. A still poorly constrained mechanism occurring in both systems is ebullition, the transfer of methane bubbles directly through the water column towards the atmosphere. Whereas in the oceans, mainly archaea often in a consortium with bacteria oxidize the methane in the sediments or water column, in freshwater systems the oxidation process seems to be much more versatile in respect to electron acceptors (oxygen, nitrate, iron, and manganese) as well as to the microorganisms involved. We believe that in the future there will be more discoveries and surprises when investigating freshwater methane oxidation.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge all people that have gone with us the road of first determining methane emissions in Swiss and African lakes and reservoirs (Torsten Diem, Natacha Pasche, Martin Schmid, Johny Wüest, Tonya DelSontro, Sébastien Sollberger, Werner Eugster) or determining methane in lake sediments (Lina Tyroller, Rolf Kipfer), followed by investigating methane oxidation (Francoise Lucas, Edith Durisch-Kaiser, Kirsten Oswald, Carole Guggenheim, Andreas Brand, Helmut Bürgman, Corinne Jegge, Jana Milucka, Marcel Kuypers). Thanks also to all technicians without their help this work would not have been possible (the late Gijs Nobbe, Serge Robert, Alois Zwyssig, Christian Dinkel, Patrick Kathriner, Michael Schurter). We acknowledge funding from Eawag and ETH and from several Swiss National Science Foundation grants to BW and CJS (SNF grant no. 2100-068130, 200020-103887, 135299, 153091, 128707).

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  1. Department of Surface Waters-Research and Management, Eawag, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland

    Carsten J. Schubert & Bernhard Wehrli

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  1. Carsten J. Schubert
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Correspondence to Carsten J. Schubert .

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  1. Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, HB Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Alfons J.M. Stams

  2. Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Diana Sousa

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Schubert, C.J., Wehrli, B. (2018). Contribution of Methane Formation and Methane Oxidation to Methane Emission from Freshwater Systems. In: Stams, A., Sousa, D. (eds) Biogenesis of Hydrocarbons. Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53114-4_18-1

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