Objective
This project aims to determine the size of the soil as a sink for methane in Northern European terrestrial ecosystems, as a contribution towards its assessment in the mid-latitudes as a whole, as part also of the objective of IGBP.
Methane is an important greenhouse gas and its concentration is increasing rapidly in the atmosphere. Enhanced sources and diminished sinks are both suspected. One poorly quantified sink for methane is the uptake of methane by soil microbes. The project concentrates in particular on the extent to which the sink is reduced by mineral nitrogen in the soil (especially by ammonium). This is likely to be especially important in the northern mid-latitudes, where many terrestrial ecosystems receive substantial inputs of N, either deliberately as fertiliser or inadvertently by atmospheric deposition.
Methane oxidation rates will be measured in the field in forests, natural grassland, peatland and agricultural ecosystems receiving different inputs of nitrogen as fertiliser or atmospheric deposition. Both established and novel techniques will be applied over a range of scales. These include manual and automated chamber/gc methods at the <1 m{2} scale; very large chambers (62 m{2}) with LPFTIR analysis; a flux gradient micromet method at the ha scale; and eddy correlation with a new TDL system over larger areas. Parallel measurements will be made of the soil and other environmental factors affecting methane oxidation. Controlled experiments will be undertaken at scales ranging from the test-tube to 1 m{2} lysimeters.
The information obtained will be used to build a process-based model to predict consumption rates as a function of soil, land use and climate variables, and scale up to larger areas. This will provide an important step towards modelling the methane sink over the whole mid-latitudes, which is required for further modelling of climate change.
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
EH9 3JG Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Participants (5)
1432 Aas Nlh
37077 Goettingen
2100 København Ø
EH26 0QB Penicuik
11427 Stockholm