Amy Townsend-Small

Carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions in urban turf

Undisturbed grasslands can sequester significant quantities of organic carbon (OC) in soils. Irrigation and fertilization enhance CO2sequestration in managed turfgrass ecosystems but can also increase emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). To better understand the GHG balance of urban turf, we measured OC sequestration rates and emission of N2O (a GHG ∼ 300 times more effective than CO2) in Southern California, USA. We also estimated CO2 emissions generated by fuel combustion, fertilizer production, and irrigation. We show that turf emits significant quantities of N2O (0.1–0.3 g N m−2 yr−1) associated with frequent fertilization. In ornamental lawns this is offset by OC sequestration (140 g C m−2 yr−1), while in athletic fields, there is no OC sequestration because of frequent surface restoration. Large indirect emissions of CO2 associated with turfgrass management make it clear that OC sequestration by turfgrass cannot mitigate GHG emissions in cities.

Direct measurements show decreasing methane emissions from natural gas local distribution systems in the United States.

Fugitive losses from natural gas distribution systems are a significant source of anthropogenic methane. Here, we report on a national sampling program to measure methane emissions from 13 urban distribution systems across the U.S. Emission factors were derived from direct measurements at 230 underground pipeline leaks and 229 metering and regulating facilities using stratified random sampling. When these new emission factors are combined with estimates for customer meters, maintenance, and upsets, and current pipeline miles and numbers of facilities, the total estimate is 393 Gg/yr with a 95% upper confidence limit of 854 Gg/yr (0.10% to 0.22% of the methane delivered nationwide). This fraction includes emissions from city gates to the customer meter, but does not include other urban sources or those downstream of customer meters. The upper confidence limit accounts for the skewed distribution of measurements, where a few large emitters accounted for most of the emissions. This emission estimate is 36% to 70% less than the 2011 EPA inventory, (based largely on 1990s emission data), and reflects significant upgrades at metering and regulating stations, improvements in leak detection and maintenance activities, as well as potential effects from differences in methodologies between the two studies.

River export of nutrients and organic matter from the North Slope of Alaska to the Beaufort Sea

While river-borne materials are recognized as important resources supporting coastal ecosystems around the world, estimates of river export from the North Slope of Alaska have been limited by a scarcity of water chemistry and river discharge data. This paper quantifies water, nutrient, and organic matter export from the three largest rivers (Sagavanirktok, Kuparuk, and Colville) that drain Alaskas North Slope and discusses the potential importance of river inputs for biological production in coastal waters of the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. Together these rivers export ∼297,000 metric tons of organic carbon and ∼18,000 metric tons of organic nitrogen each year. Annual fluxes of nitrate-N, ammonium-N, and soluble reactive phosphorus are approximately 1750, 200, and 140 metric tons per year, respectively. Constituent export from Alaskas North Slope is dominated by the Colville River. This is in part due to its larger size, but also because constituent yields are greater in the Colville watershed. River-supplied nitrogen may be more important to productivity along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast than previously thought. However, given the dominance of organic nitrogen export, the potential role of river-supplied nitrogen in support of primary production depends strongly on remineralization mechanisms. Although rivers draining the North Slope of Alaska make only a small contribution to overall river export from the pan-arctic watershed, comparisons with major arctic rivers reveal unique regional characteristics as well as remarkable similarities among different regions and scales. Such information is crucial for development of robust river export models that represent the arctic system as a whole.

Modeling transport and fate of riverine dissolved organic carbon in the Arctic Ocean

Received 8 October 2008; revised 5 June 2009; accepted 12 June 2009; published 7 October 2009. [1] The spatial distribution and fate of riverine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the Arctic may be significant for the regional carbon cycle but are difficult to fully characterize using the sparse observations alone. Numerical models of the circulation and biogeochemical cycles of the region can help to interpret and extrapolate the data and may ultimately be applied in global change sensitivity studies. Here we develop and explore a regional, three-dimensional model of the Arctic Ocean in which, for the first time, we explicitly represent the sources of riverine DOC with seasonal discharge based on climatological field estimates. Through a suite of numerical experiments, we explore the distribution of DOC-like tracers with realistic riverine sources and a simple linear decay to represent remineralization through microbial degradation. The model reproduces the slope of the DOC-salinity relationship observed in the eastern and western Arctic basins when the DOC tracer lifetime is about 10 years, consistent with published inferences from field data. The new empirical parameterization of riverine DOC and the regional circulation and biogeochemical model provide new tools for application in both regional and global change studies.

Reconciling divergent estimates of oil and gas methane emissions

Significance Past studies reporting divergent estimates of methane emissions from the natural gas supply chain have generated conflicting claims about the full greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas. Top-down estimates based on large-scale atmospheric sampling often exceed bottom-up estimates based on source-based emission inventories. In this work, we reconcile top-down and bottom-up methane emissions estimates in one of the country’s major natural gas production basins using easily replicable measurement and data integration techniques. These convergent emissions estimates provide greater confidence that we can accurately characterize the sources of emissions, including the large impact that a small proportion of high-emitters have on total emissions and determine the implications for mitigation. Published estimates of methane emissions from atmospheric data (top-down approaches) exceed those from source-based inventories (bottom-up approaches), leading to conflicting claims about the climate implications of fuel switching from coal or petroleum to natural gas. Based on data from a coordinated campaign in the Barnett Shale oil and gas-producing region of Texas, we find that top-down and bottom-up estimates of both total and fossil methane emissions agree within statistical confidence intervals (relative differences are 10% for fossil methane and 0.1% for total methane). We reduced uncertainty in top-down estimates by using repeated mass balance measurements, as well as ethane as a fingerprint for source attribution. Similarly, our bottom-up estimate incorporates a more complete count of facilities than past inventories, which omitted a significant number of major sources, and more effectively accounts for the influence of large emission sources using a statistical estimator that integrates observations from multiple ground-based measurement datasets. Two percent of oil and gas facilities in the Barnett accounts for half of methane emissions at any given time, and high-emitting facilities appear to be spatiotemporally variable. Measured oil and gas methane emissions are 90% larger than estimates based on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory and correspond to 1.5% of natural gas production. This rate of methane loss increases the 20-y climate impacts of natural gas consumed in the region by roughly 50%.

Nitrogen losses in anoxic marine sediments driven by Thioploca-anammox bacterial consortia

Ninety per cent of marine organic matter burial occurs in continental margin sediments, where a substantial fraction of organic carbon escapes oxidation and enters long-term geologic storage within sedimentary rocks. In such environments, microbial metabolism is limited by the diffusive supply of electron acceptors. One strategy to optimize energy yields in a resource-limited habitat is symbiotic metabolite exchange among microbial associations. Thermodynamic and geochemical considerations indicate that microbial co-metabolisms are likely to play a critical part in sedimentary organic carbon cycling. Yet only one association, between methanotrophic archaea and sulphate-reducing bacteria, has been demonstrated in marine sediments in situ, and little is known of the role of microbial symbiotic interactions in other sedimentary biogeochemical cycles. Here we report in situ molecular and incubation-based evidence for a novel symbiotic consortium between two chemolithotrophic bacteria—anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing (anammox) bacteria and the nitrate-sequestering sulphur-oxidizing Thioploca species—in anoxic sediments of the Soledad basin at the Mexican Pacific margin. A mass balance of benthic solute fluxes and the corresponding nitrogen isotope composition of nitrate and ammonium fluxes indicate that anammox bacteria rely on Thioploca species for the supply of metabolic substrates and account for about 57 ± 21 per cent of the total benthic N2 production. We show that Thioploca–anammox symbiosis intensifies benthic fixed nitrogen losses in anoxic sediments, bypassing diffusion-imposed limitations by efficiently coupling the carbon, nitrogen and sulphur cycles.

Stable isotopic composition of nitrate in Lake Taihu, China, and major inflow rivers

Identification of sources of nutrient pollution is a first step towards remediation of eutrophication in aquatic ecosystems. The stable isotope nitrogen-15 (15N) is a natural indicator of nitrogen (N) source and biogeochemistry. We sampled Lake Taihu, a hyper-eutrophic lake in eastern China, and major inflow rivers during winter and spring of 2004 to determine concentration and δ15N of nitrate (NO 3 - ). Nitrate concentrations in rivers and the lake were higher, in most cases, in spring than in winter. δ15N of NO 3 - was not correlated with NO 3 - concentration, indicating that concentrations alone are insufficient to describe N sources. Results show that riverine N inputs in winter are influenced by discharge of human sewage into rivers and the lake. In spring, however, wastewater inputs to the lake appear to be balanced by fertilizers, atmospheric, and/or N2 fixation sources. Rain NO 3 - concentrations were seasonally high and isotopically enriched compared to potential sources, indicating that rain may be a significant or even dominant source of N to the lake during the rainy season. δ15N values show that urbanized areas of the lake have more sewage-derived N than those areas dominated by agriculture, aquaculture, or industry. This observation has important implications for human health, since Lake Taihu is a source of drinking and irrigation water as well as fish for human consumption.

High Methane Emissions from a Midlatitude Reservoir Draining an Agricultural Watershed

Reservoirs are a globally significant source of methane (CH4), although most measurements have been made in tropical and boreal systems draining undeveloped watersheds. To assess the magnitude of CH4 emissions from reservoirs in midlatitude agricultural regions, we measured CH4 and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rates from William H. Harsha Lake (Ohio, U.S.A.), an agricultural impacted reservoir, over a 13 month period. The reservoir was a strong source of CH4 throughout the year, emitting on average 176 ± 36 mg C m(-2) d(-1), the highest reservoir CH4 emissions profile documented in the United States to date. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, the largest CH4 emissions were during summer stratified conditions, not during fall turnover. The river-reservoir transition zone emitted CH4 at rates an order of magnitude higher than the rest of the reservoir, and total carbon emissions (i.e., CH4 + CO2) were also greater at the transition zone, indicating that the river delta supported greater carbon mineralization rates than elsewhere. Midlatitude agricultural impacted reservoirs may be a larger source of CH4 to the atmosphere than currently recognized, particularly if river deltas are consistent CH4 hot spots. We estimate that CH4 emissions from agricultural reservoirs could be a significant component of anthropogenic CH4 emissions in the U.S.A.

Integrating Source Apportionment Tracers into a Bottom-up Inventory of Methane Emissions in the Barnett Shale Hydraulic Fracturing Region

A growing dependence on natural gas for energy may exacerbate emissions of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4). Identifying fingerprints of these emissions is critical to our understanding of potential impacts. Here, we compare stable isotopic and alkane ratio tracers of natural gas, agricultural, and urban CH4 sources in the Barnett Shale hydraulic fracturing region near Fort Worth, Texas. Thermogenic and biogenic sources were compositionally distinct, and emissions from oil wells were enriched in alkanes and isotopically depleted relative to natural gas wells. Emissions from natural gas production varied in δ(13)C and alkane ratio composition, with δD-CH4 representing the most consistent tracer of natural gas sources. We integrated our data into a bottom-up inventory of CH4 for the region, resulting in an inventory of ethane (C2H6) sources for comparison to top-down estimates of CH4 and C2H6 emissions. Methane emissions in the Barnett are a complex mixture of urban, agricultural, and fossil fuel sources, which makes source apportionment challenging. For example, spatial heterogeneity in gas composition and high C2H6/CH4 ratios in emissions from conventional oil production add uncertainty to top-down models of source apportionment. Future top-down studies may benefit from the addition of δD-CH4 to distinguish thermogenic and biogenic sources.

Nitrous oxide emissions from wastewater treatment and water reclamation plants in southern California.

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) is a long-lived and potent greenhouse gas produced during microbial nitrification and denitrification. In developed countries, centralized water reclamation plants often use these processes for N removal before effluent is used for irrigation or discharged to surface water, thus making this treatment a potentially large source of N₂O in urban areas. In the arid but densely populated southwestern United States, water reclamation for irrigation is an important alternative to long-distance water importation. We measured N₂O concentrations and fluxes from several wastewater treatment processes in urban southern California. We found that N removal during water reclamation may lead to in situ N₂O emission rates that are three or more times greater than traditional treatment processes (C oxidation only). In the water reclamation plants tested, N₂O production was a greater percentage of total N removed (1.2%) than traditional treatment processes (C oxidation only) (0.4%). We also measured stable isotope ratios (δN and δO) of emitted N₂O and found distinct δN signatures of N₂O from denitrification (0.0 ± 4.0 ‰) and nitrification reactors (-24.5 ± 2.2 ‰), respectively. These isotope data confirm that both nitrification and denitrification contribute to N₂O emissions within the same treatment plant. Our estimates indicate that N₂O emissions from biological N removal for water reclamation may be several orders of magnitude greater than N₂O emissions from agricultural activities in highly urbanized southern California. Our results suggest that wastewater treatment that includes biological nitrogen removal can significantly increase urban N₂O emissions.