Large Lakes Dominate CO2 Evasion From Lakes in an Arctic Catchment

CO2 evasion from freshwater lakes is an important component of the carbon cycle. However, the relative contribution from different lake sizes may vary, since several parameters underlying CO2 flux are size dependent. Here we estimated the annual lake CO2 evasion from a catchment in northern Sweden e...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Rocher-Ros, Gerard, Giesler, Reiner, Lundin, Erik, Salimi, Shokoufeh, Jonsson, Anders, Karlsson, Jan
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2017
Subjects:
Climate Research
Geophysics
Lake CO evasion
Lake size distribution
Upscaling C cycle
Arctic
Northern Sweden
Online Access:https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/3ed54a5a-6634-489b-bf05-4259c4fbefd2
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076146
Description
Summary:CO2 evasion from freshwater lakes is an important component of the carbon cycle. However, the relative contribution from different lake sizes may vary, since several parameters underlying CO2 flux are size dependent. Here we estimated the annual lake CO2 evasion from a catchment in northern Sweden encompassing about 30,000 differently sized lakes. We show that areal CO2 fluxes decreased rapidly with lake size, but this was counteracted by the greater overall coverage of larger lakes. As a result, total efflux increased with lake size and the single largest lake in the catchment dominated the CO2 evasion (53% of all CO2 evaded). By contrast, the contribution from the smallest ponds (about 27,000) was minor (<6%). Our results emphasize the importance of accounting for both CO2 flux rates and areal contribution of various sized lakes in assessments of CO2 evasion at the landscape scale.

Similar Items