Climate-driven increase of natural wetland methane emissions offset by human-induced wetland reduction in China over the past three decades

Qiuan Zhu; Changhui Peng; Jinxun Liu; Hong Jiang; Xiuqin Fang; Huai Chen; Zhichun Niu; Peng Gong; Guanghui Lin; Meng Wang; Yanzheng Yang; Jie Chang; Ying Ge; Wenhua Xiang; Xiangwen Deng; Jin-Sheng He

doi:10.1038/srep38020

Climate-driven increase of natural wetland methane emissions offset by human-induced wetland reduction in China over the past three decades

Scientific Reports

By: Qiuan Zhu, Changhui Peng, Jinxun Liu, Hong Jiang, Xiuqin Fang, Huai Chen, Zhichun Niu, Peng Gong, Guanghui Lin, Meng Wang, Yanzheng Yang, Jie Chang, Ying Ge, Wenhua Xiang, Xiangwen Deng, and Jin-Sheng He

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38020

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Abstract

Both anthropogenic activities and climate change can affect the biogeochemical processes of natural wetland methanogenesis. Quantifying possible impacts of changing climate and wetland area on wetland methane (CH₄) emissions in China is important for improving our knowledge on CH₄ budgets locally and globally. However, their respective and combined effects are uncertain. We incorporated changes in wetland area derived from remote sensing into a dynamic CH₄ model to quantify the human and climate change induced contributions to natural wetland CH₄ emissions in China over the past three decades. Here we found that human-induced wetland loss contributed 34.3% to the CH₄ emissions reduction (0.92 TgCH₄), and climate change contributed 20.4% to the CH₄ emissions increase (0.31 TgCH₄), suggesting that decreasing CH₄ emissions due to human-induced wetland reductions has offset the increasing climate-driven CH₄ emissions. With climate change only, temperature was a dominant controlling factor for wetland CH₄ emissions in the northeast (high latitude) and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (high altitude) regions, whereas precipitation had a considerable influence in relative arid north China. The inevitable uncertainties caused by the asynchronous for different regions or periods due to inter-annual or seasonal variations among remote sensing images should be considered in the wetland CH₄emissions estimation.

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Additional publication details
Publication type	Article
Publication Subtype	Journal Article
Title	Climate-driven increase of natural wetland methane emissions offset by human-induced wetland reduction in China over the past three decades
Series title	Scientific Reports
DOI	10.1038/srep38020
Volume	6
Year Published	2016
Language	English
Publisher	Macmillan Journals Ltd.
Publisher location	London
Contributing office(s)	Western Geographic Science Center
Description	38020; 7 p.
Country	China
Google Analytic Metrics	Metrics page