Oral Presentation Freshwater Sciences 2023

A global database of greenhouse gas fluxes from tropical inland waters (#442)

Clément Duvert 1 , Nicholas S Marzolf 2 , Annika Linkhorst 3 , Katrin Attermeyer 4 , Elisa Calamita 5 , Tonya DelSontro 6 , Loris Deirmendjian 7 , Alicia Dixon 8 , Charlotte Grasset 9 , Allison M Herreid 8 , Luke C Jeffrey 10 , Shaoda Liu 11 , Carla López-Lloreda 12 , Marcia N Macedo 13 , Lediane Marcon 14 , Diana Oviedo-Vargas 15 , José Paranaíba 16 , Lishan Ran 17 , Adam T Rexroade 1 , Diego A Riveros-Iregui 18 , Judith Rosentreter 10 , Vanessa Solano 1 , Pierre Taillardat 19 , Jilong Wang 20 , Keridwen M Whitmore 18 , Liwei Zhang 21 , Alberto V Borges 22
  1. Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, Australia
  2. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
  3. Federal Institute of Hydrology, Koblenz, Germany
  4. WasserCluster Lunz, Lunz Am See, Austria
  5. Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
  6. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  7. Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse , France
  8. University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
  9. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
  10. Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia
  11. Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
  12. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
  13. Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA
  14. Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
  15. Stroud Water Research Center, Avondale, PA, USA
  16. Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  17. The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
  18. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
  19. National University of Singapore, Singapore
  20. Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
  21. Peking University, Beijing, China
  22. Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium

Strong consensus exists that inland waters emit globally significant quantities of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Tropical inland waters are often considered major contributors to these greenhouse gas fluxes, yet consistent and reliable estimates of aquatic greenhouse gas fluxes are lacking for the tropics. One of the limitations to obtaining a more accurate quantification of these fluxes is the lack of a curated and openly accessible data repository of greenhouse gas observations from across the tropics. To address this issue, we are developing the first comprehensive database of greenhouse gas concentrations and fluxes for tropical and subtropical inland waters (streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands). Our database includes over 15,000 records of gas concentration and flux measurements that were extracted from a total of 290 publications between 1975 and 2023. In this presentation we provide an overview of the database, summarise basic patterns of gas concentrations and fluxes across the region, and derive priority research areas for tropical inland water greenhouse gas research. We show that improved greenhouse gas emission estimates will require (1) addressing the observational gap in the mountainous and seasonal tropics, (2) developing approaches that cross boundaries between ecosystem types and scales, and (3) sharing and publishing data more systematically.