EPA on Lake Redstone, June 1st and 2nd

The US Environmental Protection Agency is studying greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs.  The study will sample 108 reservoirs over three years (2021 is year two). They will be on Lake Redstone June 1
& 2.  On Tuesday they will deploy sampling traps with anchors and buoys at around 15 locations.  They will return on Wednesday to
remove the sampling devices.  Please avoid the orange buoys that will be placed in the lake for the study. 

For more information, please go
to the Lake District web site:
https://www.lakeredstonepd.org/

If you have any questions, please contact us
at LRPD.Board@gmail.com,

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SuRGE 

Survey of Reservoir Greenhouse gas Emissions 

Dr. Jake Beaulieu 

2021-05-21 

Background 

The USEPA Office of Air and Radiation has requested that methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide  (CO2) emissions from reservoirs be included in the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions  and Sinks. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued guidance for  estimating these emissions, but the model used to derive the IPCC emission factors was trained with  a global data set which included very few measurements from the US. It is therefore uncertain how  accurate the IPCC emission factors are for US reservoirs. Methane emission rates vary by three  orders of magnitude across US reservoirs and a small bias in IPCC emission factors could strongly  bias the inventory estimate. To address this problem, the Office of Research and Development will  execute a four-year survey of CH4 and CO2 emission rates from US reservoirs. This will be a  collaborative effort involving several ORD locations, EPA Regional Biologists, and other  collaborators. 

Survey Design 

The SuRGE project (Survey of Reservoir Greenhouse gas Emissions) is a statistical survey of CH4  and CO2 emission rates from 108 U.S. reservoirs. The survey design includes stratification by  ecoregion, depth, and chlorophyll, thereby ensuring large gradients in environmental drivers  (i.e. depth, chla) to inform subsequent modeling efforts. Each waterbody was previously sampled by  the US EPA during the 2017 National Lakes Assessment. 

Measurement Details 

Each of the 108 waterbodies in the survey will be sampled one time during the four year program  (2020 - 2023). All sampling will be conducted between June 1 and Sept. 15. Each waterbody will  contain 15 - 25 sites where ebullitive (i.e. bubbling) emission rates will be measured via overnight  

deployments of inverted funnels. Diffusive emissions will be measured at the sites via ~3 minute  floating chamber deployments. Ancillary measurements include water chemistry, chlorophyll, and  dissolved gas concentrations.

Collaborators 

Dr. Jake Beaulieu (ORD/CEMM/WECD/WMB) is the project lead based out of Cincinnati. Co-leads  include Lil Herger (EPA Region 10 @ Seattle), John Walker (ORD/CEMM/AEMD @ Research  Triangle Park, NC), Ken Forshay (ORD/CESER/CGRD @ Ada, OK), Jeff Hollister  (ORD/CEMM/ACESD @ Narragansett, RI), and Bridget Deemer (USGS @ Flagstaff, AZ). Field  crews will be deployed from these six locations. 

Contact 

Jake Beaulieu 

ORD/CEMM/WECD/WMB 

513-569-7842 

beaulieu.jake@epa.gov 

Selected References 

DelSontro, T., Beaulieu, J. J., & Downing, J. A. (2018). Greenhouse gas emissions from lakes and  impoundments: Upscaling in the face of global change. Limnology and Oceanography Letters, 3(3),  64-75. doi:10.1002/lol2.10073 

Prairie, Y. T., Alm, J., Beaulieu, J., Barros, N., Battin, T., Cole, J., . . . Vachon, D. (2017).  Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freshwater Reservoirs: What Does the Atmosphere See?  Ecosystems. doi:10.1007/s10021-017-0198-9

Beaulieu, J. J., Smolenski, R. L., Nietch, C. T., Townsend-Small, A., & Elovitz, M. S. (2014). High  Methane Emissions from a Midlatitude Reservoir Draining an Agricultural Watershed. Environmental  Science & Technology, 48(19), 11100-11108. doi:10.1021/es501871g