Monitoring of carbon dioxide and methane emission from the shuibuya reservoir over the Qingjiang River Basin, China

Greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere has already grown continuously due to the usage of fossil fuels and other anthropogenic activities since industrial revolution. The improvement of greenhouse gas concentration maybe results in climate change and redistribution of water resources. So more and more attentions were paid to low-carbon or clean energy exploitation in order to meet the energy demand of economic and social development. Hydropower is an important clean energy which would not produce greenhouse gas directly. But the construction of dam maybe change regional climate, aquatic ecosystem and the distribution of carbon cycle in water body of reservoir. So greenhouse gas emission from freshwater reservoir was monitored and analyzed at the Shuibuya reservoir over the Qingjiang River Basin, China in this paper. The floating chamber was used to measure carbon dioxide and methane fluxes at the water-atmosphere interface of water body. All measurement points are distributed in the upstream, middle, tributary or bay, and drawdown zone of the Shuibuya reservoir respectively. Data analysis indicated that carbon dioxide fluxes at all measurement points were below 800 mg.m^-2.d^-1 and methane fluxes was below 8.0 mg.m^-2.d^-1 at Sep. 03, 2010. The navigated measurement showed the slightly improved trend of carbon dioxide and methane concentration from upstream to dams of the reservoir. So it is concluded that the Shuibuya reservoir releases carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere from water body at Sep. 3, 2010, but the emission amount is very small and could be neglected compared to lakes, wetland and other natural water body.