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Nitrous oxide production and evasion from the Markland Pool of theOhio River
Citation:
BEAULIEU, J., W. D. SHUSTER, AND J. REBHOLZ. Nitrous oxide production and evasion from the Markland Pool of theOhio River. Presented at Annual Meeting of the North American Benthological Society, Sante Fe, NM, June 06 - 11, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform EPA.
Description:
This figure shows how atmospheric N2O concentrations have increased from a background of about 270ppb up to 315 by the year 2000. This trend has continued and todays levels are at about 321 and are continuing to increase. This is a problem because N2O is a potent greenhouse gas. In fact, one molecule of N2O is 300 times more effective at trapping heat than one molecule of carbon dioxide. In an effort to determine where all of this N2O is coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has assembled a global N2O budget. This budget suggests that about 20% of the N2O accumulating in the atmosphere is produced by the microbial conversion of N to N2O in aquatic systems, but this estimate is highly uncertain because there simply aren’t many published measurements of N2O emissions from aquatic systems in the literature. So today I would like to tell you about some work I have been doing to try to get a better understanding of the factors that control N2O emission rates from aquatic systems.
