What You Can Do About the Negative Effects of Methane

• Main Authors: Maza, JB, Rodewald, Laurel, Thurmond, Ashley
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Pepperdine Digital Commons 2014
• Subjects: Biology; environment; Stephen Davis; plants; Pepperdine University; Life Sciences; permafrost
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/sturesearch/103; https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=sturesearch

Our central objective was to investigate the apparent rise in methane emissions and whether or not they are having a negative effect on the environment. By themselves, methane emissions are natural and self-regulating (and thus do not cause damage to the atmosphere), but our thesis is that a build up of methane emissions as a result of increased human activity/negligence poses a threat to the environment, and needs to be addressed in the quest to live sustainably. In our research, we chose to focus specifically on one source of methane emissions: permafrost, both because there is a significant amount of methane present in permafrost, and also because the rate of emissions is heavily susceptible to changes in temperature.