Large increases in methane emissions expected from North America's largest wetland complex.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36857447.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.ade1112 and PMC identifier 9977182.
- 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
Natural methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) emissions from aquatic ecosystems may rise because of human-induced climate warming, although the magnitude of increase is highly uncertain. Using an exceptionally large CH<sub>4</sub> flux dataset (~19,000 chamber measurements) and remotely sensed information, we modeled plot- and landscape-scale wetland CH<sub>4</sub> emissions from the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), North America's largest wetland complex. Plot-scale CH<sub>4</sub> emissions were driven by hydrology, temperature, vegetation, and wetland size. Historically, landscape-scale PPR wetland CH<sub>4</sub> emissions were largely dependent on total wetland extent. However, regardless of future wetland extent, PPR CH<sub>4</sub> emissions are predicted to increase by two- or threefold by 2100 under moderate or severe warming scenarios, respectively. Our findings suggest that international efforts to decrease atmospheric CH<sub>4</sub> concentrations should jointly account for anthropogenic and natural emissions to maintain climate mitigation targets to the end of the century.