Regenerating wetlands reduces GHG emissions

[Tom Goreau]

Yet another way that regenerative land management can turn GHG sources into sinks. Flooding of wetland soils reduces CO2 and N2O emissions much more than it increases methane, regenerating wetlands increases natural carbon sinks and suppresses GHG sources caused by drainage.

 

This confirms 1980s studies on GHG emissions in the Everglades:

T. J. Goreau & W. Z. de Mello, 2002, Nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide fluxes from South Florida habitats during the transition from dry to wet seasons: Potential impacts of Everglades drainage and reflooding on the atmosphere, p. 281-306 in The Everglades, Florida Bay, and THE Coral Reefs of the Florida Keys: An Ecosystem Sourcebook (K. G. Porter and J. W. Porter, Eds.), CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

 

 

 

[Tom Goreau]

Yes, sulfate prevent methanogenesis in most marine sediments because the Redox potential is poised by the sulfate/sulfide couple too high to allow methanogenesis and it is very hard to exhaust the large amount of sulfate in sea water so methanogenesis can proceed.

 

The prevention of methanogenesis in seawater (with 28 millimolar sulfate) does not happen in low sulfate freshwater anoxic habitats.

 

This refers to sediments and waters, but does not apply to aerosols in equilibrium with atmospheric oxygen, not sure about sulfate iron aerosols.

 

Nitrous oxide has much more complicated sources and sinks in soils and waters and is much harder to control than methane, but the least N2O is produced under fully aerobic decomposition:

 

T. J. Goreau & W. M. de Mello, 2007, Minimizing net greenhouse gas emissions from mangrove and wetland soils, p. 239-248, in Y. Tateda et al. (Eds.) GREENHOUSE GAS AND CARBON BALANCES IN MANGROVE COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS, Gendai Tosho, Tokyo, Japan

 

 

From: Renaud de RICHTER <renaud.d...@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, August 12, 2022 at 6:09 PM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Regenerating wetlands reduces GHG emissions

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. 

 

Do you think adding sulfates (or iron) will reduce methane emissions without  increasing N2O emissions?

 

 

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