Environmental determinants of aerobic methane oxidation in a tropical river network

Abstract

Aerobic methane oxidation (MOX) significantly reduces methane (CH4) emissions from inland water bodies and is, therefore, an important determinant of global CH4 budget. Yet, the magnitude and controls of MOX rates in rivers – a quantitatively significant natural source of atmospheric CH4 – are poorly constrained. Here, we conducted a series of incubation experiments to understand the magnitude and environmental controls of MOX rates in tropical fluvial systems. We observed a large variability in MOX rate (0.03 - 3.45 μmol l-1d-1) shaped by a suit of environmental variables. Accordingly, we developed an empirical model for MOX that incorporate key environmental drivers, including temperature, CH4, total phosphorus, and dissolved oxygen (O2) concentrations, based on the results of our incubation experiments. We show that temperature dependency of MOX (activation energy: 0.66 ± 0.18 eV) is lower than that of sediment methanogenesis (0.71 ± 0.21 eV) in the studied tropical fluvial network. Furthermore, we observed a non-linear relationship between O2 concentration and MOX, with the highest MOX rate occuring ∼135 μmol O2l-1, above or below this “optimal O2” concentration, MOX rate shows a gradual decline. Together, our results suggest that the relatively lower temperature response of MOX compared to methanogenesis along with the projected decrease of O2 concentration due to organic pollution may cause elevated CH4 emission from tropical southeast Asian rivers. Since estimation of CH4 oxidation is often neglected in routine CH4 monitoring programs, the model developed here may help to integrate MOX rate into process-based models for fluvial CH4 budget.