It is now well established that microbial sulphate-reduction can proceed in environments with a pH<5. This review summarizes existing reports on s

Reservoir drawdown areas—where sediment is exposed to the atmosphere due to water-level fluctuations—are hotspots for carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. However, the global extent of drawdown areas is unknown, precluding an accurate assessment of the carbon budget of reservoirs. Here we show, on the basis of satellite observations of 6,794 reservoirs between 1985 and 2015, that 15% of the global reservoir area was dry. Exposure of drawdown areas was most pronounced in reservoirs close to the tropics and shows a complex dependence on climatic (precipitation, temperature) and anthropogenic (water use) drivers. We re-assessed the global carbon emissions from reservoirs by apportioning CO₂and methane emissions to water surfaces and drawdown areas using published areal emission rates. The new estimate assigns 26.2 (15–40) (95% confidence interval) TgCO₂-C yr⁻¹to drawdown areas, and increases current global CO₂emissions from reservoirs by 53% (60.3 (43.2–79.5) TgCO₂-C yr⁻¹). Taking into account drawdown areas, the ratio between carbon emissions and carbon burial in sediments is 2.02 (1.04–4.26). This suggests that reservoirs emit more carbon than they bury, challenging the current understanding that reservoirs are net carbon sinks. Thus, consideration of drawdown areas overturns our conception of the role of reservoirs in the carbon cycle.

Many inland waters exhibit complete or partial desiccation, or have vanished due to global change, exposing sediments to the atmosphere. Yet, data on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from these sediments are too scarce to upscale emissions for global estimates or to understand their fundamental drivers. Here, we present the results of a global survey covering 196 dry inland waters across diverse ecosystem types and climate zones. We show that their CO₂ emissions share fundamental drivers and constitute a substantial fraction of the carbon cycled by inland waters. CO₂ emissions were consistent across ecosystem types and climate zones, with local characteristics explaining much of the variability. Accounting for such emissions increases global estimates of carbon emissions from inland waters by 6% (~0.12 Pg C y⁻¹). Our results indicate that emissions from dry inland waters represent a significant and likely increasing component of the inland waters carbon cycle.

Stream networks have recently been discovered to be major but poorly constrained natural greenhouse gas (GHG) sources. A fundamental problem is that several measurement approaches have been used without cross-comparisons. Flux chambers represent a potentially powerful methodological approach if robust and reliable ways to use chambers on running water can be defined. Here we compare the use of anchored and freely drifting chambers on various streams with different flow velocities. The study clearly shows that (1) anchored chambers enhance turbulence under the chambers and thus elevate fluxes, (2) drifting chambers have a very small impact on the water turbulence under the chamber and thus generate more reliable fluxes, (3) the bias of the anchored chambers greatly depends on chamber design and sampling conditions, and (4) there is a promising method to reduce the bias from anchored chambers by using a flexible plastic foil collar to seal the chambers to the water surface, rather than having rigid chamber walls penetrating into the water. Altogether, these results provide novel guidance on how to apply flux chambers in running water, which will have important consequences for measurements to constrain the global GHG balances.