Fingerprint of rice paddies in spatial-temporal dynamics of atmospheric methane concentration in monsoon Asia.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31992693.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-14155-5 and PMC identifier 6987195.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Agriculture (e.g., rice paddies) has been considered one of the main emission sources responsible for the sudden rise of atmospheric methane concentration (XCH<sub>4</sub>) since 2007, but remains debated. Here we use satellite-based rice paddy and XCH<sub>4</sub> data to investigate the spatial-temporal relationships between rice paddy area, rice plant growth, and XCH<sub>4</sub> in monsoon Asia, which accounts for ~87% of the global rice area. We find strong spatial consistencies between rice paddy area and XCH<sub>4</sub> and seasonal consistencies between rice plant growth and XCH<sub>4</sub>. Our results also show a decreasing trend in rice paddy area in monsoon Asia since 2007, which suggests that the change in rice paddy area could not be one of the major drivers for the renewed XCH<sub>4</sub> growth, thus other sources and sinks should be further investigated. Our findings highlight the importance of satellite-based paddy rice datasets in understanding the spatial-temporal dynamics of XCH<sub>4</sub> in monsoon Asia.