Greenhouse Gas Emissions — Fluxes and Processes

Tremblay, Alain; Varfalvy, Louis; Roehm, C. L.; Garneau, Michelle

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-26643-3

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 449 publications

(833 reference statements)

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“…and may affect GHG emissions (Ford and Johnson, 1986;Deemer et al, 2016;Zamani et al, 2020). It was suggested that the flooded organic matter and vegetation could potentially contribute to large emissions of methane (CH 4 ) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to the atmosphere, especially during the first year and even 10 years after flooding (Rudd et al, 1993;Kelly et al, 1997;Delmas et al, 2005;Tremblay, 2005). Moreover, it was reported that carbon emissions from a tropical hydropower plant (in Brazil) could reach four times the carbon emissions from a comparable fossil fuel station during the first 10 years (Fearnside, 1995(Fearnside, , 2006.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-Term Evolution of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Global Reservoirs

Yan

Thieu

Garnier

2021

Front. Environ. Sci.

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The contribution of artificial reservoirs to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been emphasized in previous studies. In the present study, we collected and updated data on GHG emission rates from reservoirs at the global scale, and applied a new classification method based on the hydrobelt concept. Our results showed that CH4 and CO2 emissions were significantly different in the hydrobelt groups (p < 0.01), while no significant difference was found for N2O emissions, possibly due to their limited measurements. We found that annual GHG emissions (calculated as C or N) from global reservoirs amounted to 12.9 Tg CH4-C, 50.8 Tg CO2-C, and 0.04 Tg N2O-N. Furthermore, GHG emissions (calculated as CO2 equivalents) were also estimated for the 1950–2017 period based on the cumulative number and surface area of global reservoirs in the different hydrobelts. The highest increase rate in both the number of reservoirs and their surface area, which occurred from 1950 to the 1980s, led to an increase in GHG emissions from reservoirs. Since then, the increase rate of reservoir construction, and hence GHG emissions, has slowed down. Moreover, we also examined the potential impact of reservoir eutrophication on GHG emissions and found that GHG emissions from reservoirs could increase by 40% under conditions in which total phosphorus would double. In addition, we showed that the characteristics of reservoirs (e.g., geographical location) and their catchments (e.g., surrounding terrestrial net primary production, and precipitation) may influence GHG emissions. Overall, a major finding of our study was to provide an estimate of the impact of large reservoirs during the 1950–2017 period, in terms of GHG emissions. This should help anticipate future GHG emissions from reservoirs considering all reservoirs being planned worldwide. Besides using the classification per hydrobelt and thus reconnecting reservoirs to their watersheds, our study further emphasized the efforts to be made regarding the measurement of GHG emissions in some hydrobelts and in considering the growing number of reservoirs.

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