Eutrophication of fresh waters results in increased CO2 uptake by primary production, but at the same time increased emissions of CH4 to the atmosphere. Given the contrasting effects of CO2 uptake and CH4 release, the net effect of eutrophication on the CO2-equivalent balance of fresh waters is not clear. We measured carbon fluxes (CO2 and CH4 diffusion, CH4 ebullition) and CH4 oxidation in 20 freshwater mesocosms with 10 different nutrient concentrations (total phosphorus range: mesotrophic 39 µg/L until hypereutrophic 939 µg/L) and planktivorous fish in half of them. We found that the CO2-equivalent balance had a U-shaped relationship with productivity, up to a threshold in hypereutrophic systems. CO2-equivalent sinks were confined to a narrow range of net ecosystem production (NEP) between 5 and 19 mmol O2 m?3 day?1. Our findings indicate that eutrophication can shift fresh waters from sources to sinks of CO2-equivalents due to enhanced CO2 uptake, but continued eutrophication enhances CH4 emission and transforms freshwater ecosystems to net sources of CO2-equivalents to the atmosphere. Nutrient enrichment but also planktivorous fish presence increased productivity, thereby regulating the resulting CO2-equivalent balance. Increasing planktivorous fish abundance, often concomitant with eutrophication, will consequently likely affect the CO2-equivalent balance of fresh waters.
The potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) is readily emitted from tropical reservoirs, often via ebullition (bubbles). This highly stochastic emission pathway varies in space and time, however, hampering efforts to accurately assess total CH4 emissions from water bodies. We systematically studied both the spatial and temporal scales of ebullition variability in a river inflow bay of a tropical Brazilian reservoir. We conducted multiple highly resolved spatial surveys of CH4 ebullition using a hydroacoustic approach supplemented with bubble traps over a 12‐month and a 2‐week timescale to evaluate which scale of variation was more important. To quantify the spatial and temporal variability of CH4 ebullition, we used the quartile coefficients of dispersion at each point in space and time and compared their frequency distributions across the various temporal and spatial scales. We found that CH4 ebullition varied more temporally than spatially and that the intra‐annual variability was stronger than daily variability within 2 weeks. We also found that CH4 ebullition was positively related to water temperature increase and pressure decrease, but no consistent relationship with water column depth or sediment characteristics was found, further highlighting that temporal drivers of emissions were stronger than spatial drivers. Annual estimates of CH4 ebullition from our study area may vary by 75–174% if ebullition is not resolved in time and space, but at a minimum we recommend conducting spatially resolved measurements at least once during each major hydrologic season in tropical regions (i.e., in dry and rainy season when water levels are falling and rising, respectively).
Many surface waters across the boreal region are browning due to increased concentrations of colored allochthonous dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Browning may stimulate heterotrophic metabolism, may have a shading effect constraining primary production, and may acidify the water leading to decreased pH with a subsequent shift in the carbonate system. All these effects are expected to result in increased lake water carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. We tested here these expectations by assessing the effects of both altered allochthonous DOC input and light conditions through shading on lake water CO2 concentrations. We used two mesocosm experiments with water from the meso‐eutrophic Lake Erken, Sweden, to determine the relative importance of bacterial activities, primary production, and shifts in the carbonate system on CO2 concentrations. We found that DOC addition and shading resulted in a significant increase in partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in all mesocosms. Surprisingly, there was no relationship between bacterial activities and pCO2. Instead the experimental reduction of light by DOC and/or shading decreased the photosynthesis to respiration ratio leading to increased pCO2. Another driving force behind the observed pCO2 increase was a significant decrease in pH, caused by a decline in photosynthesis and the input of acidic DOC. Considering that colored allochthonous DOC may increase in a warmer and wetter climate, our results could also apply for whole lake ecosystems and pCO2 may increase in many lakes through a reduction in the rate of photosynthesis and decreased pH.
Earth's lakes at northern latitudes are mostly ice-covered in winter. When lake water freezes, some organic matter dissolved in the water is excluded from the ice. We performed complementary field sampling and laboratory freeze-up experiments to explore how freeze-up may impact the partitioning and composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in boreal lakes. We found that 16.2 ± 4.7% of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was retained in the overlying ice, 81.3 ± 5.7% of DOC was expelled to underlying unfrozen water, and 1.3 ± 0.7% was expelled as flocs. During ice formation, nitrogen (TDN, total dissolved nitrogen), ions (specific conductance), and oxidized and aromatic DOM were preferentially expelled to the underlying water column. The apparent retention factor DOCIce: DOCBefore decreased from clearwater to brownwater lakes, that is, with increasing allochthonous DOC lost from lake ice, indicating that DOM exclusion from the ice cover will become more prevalent as lakes experience browning.