Project team members and undergraduate students Tara Ferguson, Olivia Penn and Melissa LeBlonc have co-authored a paper with co-Principal Investigator Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Principal Investigator Laura Hug, and Stephanie Slowinski from the Ecohydrology Research Group. The article, titled “Landfill cover soil methane removal and microbial community composition response to applied rainfall in experimental soil columns” is published in Journal of Environmental Management and is available online via open access.
The article describes the results of the soil column incubation experiments conducted by Tara, Olivia and Melissa, that mimic landfill hot-spots with simulated regional rainfall to quantify methane oxidation capacity, directly contributing to Activity 4 of the project. Landfill hot-spots, where concentrated methane is emitted, can enrich methanotrophic microbial communities that oxidize methane to the less potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but are affected by environmental factors including soil moisture and temperature. Regions with significant seasonal and climatic variations are therefore important to consider when developing practical management and monitoring solutions to reducing methane emissions from landfills. The results from this study show that methanotrophic activity decreased with increasing soil moisture, highlighting the need for soil moisture consideration in landfill methane mitigation plans and in the practical design of landfill cover soils.
The soil column incubation experiment set-up in the lab. The experiment was set up to mimic landfill hot-spots under different soil moisture and temperature conditions with simulated regional rainfall to quantify methane oxidation capacity.