Assessment of Temporal Variability in Methane Emission from Wetlands of Uttar Pradesh India using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

Since the beginning of the industrial era, atmospheric burdens newlineof radiatively important Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), newlinemethane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) etc. have increased intensifying the earth s newlinenatural green house effect leading to the phenomenon of Global Warming (IPCC, newline2014). CH4 with 28 times higher global warming potential than CO2 is one of the newlineimportant GHG as small changes in its concentration can exert a great impact on newlineclimate. Consequently, reliable and précised measurements of changing newlineconcentrations of CH4 are required to predict the future climate change significantly. newlineWetlands, landscape features found in almost all parts of the world, are known as newline ecological supermarkets because of the extensive food chain and rich biodiversity newlinethat they support (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2007) and numerous important services that newlinethey provide to the mankind. But at the same time, being a largest natural emitters of newlineGHGs particularly CH4 wetlands are gaining the added importance among the newlinescientific community because of their role in assessing the climate change. Despite newlinethe compelling evidences that CH4 emissions from wetlands are large enough to drive newlinethe significant change in global atmospheric CH4 concentration, comprehensive newlinestudies relating to CH4 emissions from wetlands are still lacking globally. newlineVast tracts of freshwater tropical/subtropical wetlands across the world with large newlinestocks of organic carbon at warmer temperatures are found to contribute maximum to newlineCH4 emissions. Thus, being a tropical/sub-tropical country with great physiographical newlinediverse distribution of wetlands, Indian studies can provide a valuable baseline data newlinefor assessing the CH4 emissions from natural tropical/subtropical wetlands. In this newlineregard an attempt has been made in the present study to estimate CH4 emissions for newlinethe state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) as it lies in the tropical high wetland density zone of newlineIndia i.e., Indo-Gangetic plains. newlineIt has been observed that in most of the reported CH4 emission ....