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Carbon dioxide emissions from the Three Gorges Reservoir, China

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Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from the river-type reservoir is an hotspot of carbon cycle within inland waters. However, related studies on the different types of reservoirs are still inadequate. Therefore, we sampled the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR), a typical river-type reservoir having both river and lake characteristics, using an online system (HydroCTM/CO2) and YSI-6600v2 meter to determine the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and physical chemical parameters in 2013. The results showed that the CO2 flux from the mainstream ranged from 26.1 to 92.2 mg CO2/m2 h with average CO2 fluxes of 50.0 mg/m2 h. The CO2 fluxes from the tributary ranged from −10.91 to 53.95 mg CO2/m2 h with area-weighted average CO2 fluxes of 11.4 mg/m2 h. The main stream emits CO2 to the atmosphere the whole year; however, the surface water of the tributary can sometimes act as a sink of CO2 for the atmosphere. As the operation of the TGR, the tributary became more favorable to photosynthetic uptake of CO2 especially in summer. The total CO2 flux was estimated to be 0.34 and 0.03 Tg CO2/year from the mainstream and the tributaries, respectively. Our emission rates are lower than previous estimates, but they are in agreement with the average CO2 flux from temperate reservoirs estimated by Barros et al. (Nat Geosci 4(9):593–596, 2011).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank every colleague for their full assistance in field sampling. We also appreciate the reviewers for their valuable comments on this manuscript. This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41573064), The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0601003, and the Special S&T Project on Treatment and Control of Water Pollution (No. 2012ZX07104-001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Shuang Li, Fushun Wang & Wenyun Luo

  2. Department of Water Environment, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydroelectric Power Research, Beijing, 100038, China

    Yuchun Wang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200633, China

    Bing Deng

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  1. Shuang Li
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Correspondence to Fushun Wang.

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Li, S., Wang, F., Luo, W. et al. Carbon dioxide emissions from the Three Gorges Reservoir, China. Acta Geochim 36, 645–657 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11631-017-0154-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11631-017-0154-6

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