Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Reservoir Water Surfaces: A New Global Synthesis.
By B. Deemer, J. Harrison, Siyue Li, J. Beaulieu, Tonya DelSontro, N. Barros, J. F. Bezerra-Neto, Stephen M. Powers, Marco A. dos Santos, J. Vonk. BioScience, 2016
826 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Collectively, reservoirs created by dams are thought to be an important source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere. So far, efforts to quantify, model, and manage these emissions have been limited by data availability and inconsistencies in methodological approach. Here, we synthesize reservoir CH4, CO2, and N2O emission data with three main objectives: (1) to generate a global estimate of GHG emissions from reservoirs, (2) to identify the best predictors of these emissions, and (3) to consider the effect of methodology on emission estimates. We estimate that GHG emissions from reservoir water surfaces account for 0.8 (0.5-1.2) Pg CO2 equivalents per year, with the majority of this forcing due to CH4. We then discuss the potential for several alternative pathways such as dam degassing and downstream emissions to contribute significantly to overall emissions. Although prior studies have linked reservoir GHG emissions to reservoir age and latitude, we find that factors related to reservoir productivity are better predictors of emission.
Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1368a9b358f3d4f3f458b8f01a4a179e535a8015
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Citations in the corpus
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- Energy Usage Reports: Environmental awareness as part of algorithmic accountability (2019, background): “Although some types of low-carbon power generation facilities have been found to produce greenhouse gas emissions as a consequence of their architecture or design Deemer et al. (2016), carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants dominate the greenhouse gas footprint of the energy sector.”