Despite covering only 3% of the Earth’s surface, boreal and subarctic peatlands contain between 270 – 320 Tg of carbon, or about 34-46% of the carbon currently present in atmosphere – dominantly as CO2 (IPCC, 2007). Many of these peatlands began their lives after the last glacial maximum, following the retreat of glaciers from the […]
Many anthropogenic activities are significant sources of greenhouse gasses, however not all emissions are as easy to quantify as the direct burning of fossil fuels (e.g. for transportation or electricity). Other significant sources of greenhouse gasses including agriculture can be harder to quantify due to the increased number of variables involved. In Canada, this sector […]
Inland waters such as lakes and rivers are believed to be important areas for the transformation and exchange of carbon with the atmosphere; including the common greenhouse gas CO2. Even though research on these sites is growing, the diversity within sites makes it difficult to understand the general role of these areas in the global […]
I had the wonderful opportunity last week to skip what was hopefully Nova Scotia’s last snow day before summer and travel to Dallas, Texas; to take part in the inaugural Responsible Shale Energy Extraction Conference as a part of Earth Day Texas. The goal of this conference was to bring together scientists, advocates, citizens and […]
Naturally occurring, biologically productive wetlands are significant greenhouse gas contributors, producing roughly 25% of the world’s methane stock. This is a concern to scientists on a global scale, as methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 25x greater than that of CO2. It is imperative to gas flux science to understand the contribution that wetlands […]
The emission of greenhouse gasses from soils is caused by dynamic factors such as temperature and moisture. These two factors are also influenced by a multitude of external factors such as diel cycles, land management, wetting/drying events and seasonality; which all lead to a high level of variability in greenhouse gasses emitted (Savage et al., […]
Introduction: The Potential of the Created Marsh This study was done on a created brackish marsh in North Carolina. The purpose of the study was to determine what environmental factors influenced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and to see how the emissions of a created marsh differ from those of a natural marsh. One important feature […]
The International Symposium on The Cryosphere in a Changing Climate was hosted by Victoria University of Wellington from February 12 to 17, 2017, in Wellington, New Zealand. Ronald Layden from the Aurora Research Institute at Aurora College in Yellowknife, NT attended and presented his poster on “Testing Novel CO2 Soil Flux Measuring Equipment and its Use in Monitoring Permafrost Activity.” […]
Understanding greenhouse gas emissions from stored organic carbon is an increasingly important area in gas flux science. Melt of permafrost layers, caused by rising global temperatures, threatens to contribute more to atmospheric CO2 concentrations than previously thought. These large permafrost melt driven emissions of greenhouse gases also have the potential to cause accelerated global warming […]
Even though they don’t cover a large area of the world, streams are an important contributor to total aquatic CO2 emissions; the estimated emissions from streams and rivers around the world exceed those of lakes and reservoirs. The large emissions from streams is partially due to high concentrations of CO2 in streams as compared to […]