Reply to ‘Oxic methanogenesis is only a minor source of lake-wide diffusive CH4 emissions from lakes’

Abstract

<p>The prevailing paradigm in methane research is that biological methane production is exclusive to anoxic or near-anoxic habitats such as sediments and oxygen-deficient bottom waters in lakes. Paradoxically, methane supersaturation in oxic lake waters is widely reported. To resolve this paradox while preserving the paradigm, some researchers assume this methane originates entirely from anoxic sources and is then transported to the oxic waters through physical processes<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21216-1#ref-CR1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1</a>,<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21216-1#ref-CR2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2</a>,<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21216-1#ref-CR3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">3</a>. However, multiple recent studies have repeatedly shown, methane production can and does occur under oxic conditions on land, in the seas and in freshwaters, driven by diverse organisms within different life domains (Table <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21216-1#Tab1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1</a> and references therein) and via photochemical conversion<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21216-1#ref-CR4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">4</a>. These findings raise legitimate questions about the nature of the environmental dynamics and global budget of methane. Because oxic methane production (OMP) is a recent discovery, its contribution to atmospheric emission is unknown. We conducted a whole-lake basin methane mass balance and analysed relevant literature data to estimate the contribution of OMP to surface emission versus lake morphometry.</p>