Greenhouse gas tradeoffs of wetland restoration
Over 60% of southern Ontario’s wetlands have been drained for agriculture and urbanization since the mid-1800s, which has led to enhanced nutrient runoff into Lake Erie and the annual presence of harmful algal blooms. Mitigation measures have included policy incentives for wetland restoration on agricultural land, despite wetlands being the dominant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to our atmosphere. We are investigating the tradeoff of wetland restoration for nutrient retention versus greenhouse gas emissions with detailed sampling of the spatial and temporal greenhouse gas budgets of several restored agricultural wetlands in the Lake Erie basin. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Nandita Basu and Solutionscapes.
Constraining the greenhouse gas footprint of Canada’s flooded lands
Canada’s vast water-rich landscape and seasonal hydrology has led to significant flooding of more of the landscape for the purposes of hydroelectric power, flood control, navigation and more. According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signatory nations are required to report their greenhouse gas emission inventories, including those of flooded lands. We are working with several provincial hydropower utilities as well as the Grand River Conservation Authority and ECCC to improve Canada’s reporting of reservoir emissions, primarily methane, as well as modify existing reservoir emission models used globally (e.g., G-Res). This work is in collaboration with Dr. Yves Prairie at Université du Québec à Montréal.
Identifying trends in global inland water surface methane
Majority of inland waters are supersaturated in methane with respect to the atmosphere, which means they are constantly emitting this potent greenhouse gas. As such, inland waters along with wetlands, emit over a third of global methane emissions, and a third of those emissions are estimated to be anthropogenic because of eutrophication and human-induced warming. We use a dataset collected from 76 lakes and reservoirs in 24 countries via members of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) to understand drivers of surface methane concentration and stable carbon isotopic signature both spatially and temporally over the warm, stratified season.
Methane isotope geochemistry
Stable isotope geochemistry can be used to more comprehensively constrain the biogeochemical cycling of methane in our aquatic environments. Various pathways of methane production exist as well as the dominant loss process of oxidation. All these processes fractionate both carbon and hydrogen, which can be measured at the University of Waterloo’s Environmental Isotope Laboratory - an established facility with this expertise and many others.
Comparing aquatic and atmospheric methane flux techniques
Our group is using various wetland settings to compare the use of traditional aquatic methane flux techniques with state-of-the-art Hyperspectral Imaging of methane via a collaboration with Dr. Kyle Daun in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. Our goal is to assess low and diffuse methane fluxes with this technology and validate fluxes that we measure with our floating chamber systems.