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Greenhouse gas dynamics in an urbanized river system: influence of water quality and land use

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Abstract

Rivers act as a natural source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). However, anthropogenic activities can largely alter the chemical composition and microbial communities of rivers, consequently affecting their GHG production. To investigate these impacts, we assessed the accumulation of CO2, CH4, and N2O in an urban river system (Cuenca, Ecuador). High variation of dissolved GHG concentrations was found among river tributaries that mainly depended on water quality and land use. By using Prati and Oregon water quality indices, we observed a clear pattern between water quality and the dissolved GHG concentration: the more polluted the sites were, the higher were their dissolved GHG concentrations. When river water quality deteriorated from acceptable to very heavily polluted, the mean value of pCO2 and dissolved CH4 increased by up to ten times while N2O concentrations boosted by 15 times. Furthermore, surrounding land-use types, i.e., urban, roads, and agriculture, could considerably affect the GHG production in the rivers. Particularly, the average pCO2 and dissolved N2O of the sites close to urban areas were almost four times higher than those of the natural sites while this ratio was 25 times in case of CH4, reflecting the finding that urban areas had the worst water quality with almost 70% of their sites being polluted while this proportion of nature areas was only 12.5%. Lastly, we identified dissolved oxygen, ammonium, and flow characteristics as the main important factors to the GHG production by applying statistical analysis and random forests. These results highlighted the impacts of land-use types on the production of GHGs in rivers contaminated by sewage discharges and surface runoff.

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Acknowledgements

This research was performed in the context of the VLIR Ecuador Biodiversity Network project. This project was funded by the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad-Universitaire Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (VLIR-UOS), which supports partnerships between universities and university colleges in Flanders and the South. We thank Carlos Santiago Deluquez, Caio Neves, Paula Avila, Juan Enrique Orellana, and Kate Pesantez for their contributions during the sampling campaign. We are grateful to the Water and Soil Quality Analysis Laboratory of the University of Cuenca for their supports in our analyses. The sampling campaigns were taken place in the framework of the development of the ERASMUS + project “Water Management and Climate Change in the Focus of International Master Courses (WATERMAS)” financed by the European “Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)”. The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Long Ho is a postdoctoral fellow of the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk—Vlaanderen (FWO) (project number 1253921N). Data presented in this work can be found in Ho et al. (2021a). We thank the five reviewers for their relevant and constructive remarks that helped to improve the quality of our work.

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fwo,1253921 N,Long Ho

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Long Ho, Ruben Jerves-Cobo & Peter Goethals

  2. PROMAS, Universidad de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador

    Ruben Jerves-Cobo

  3. Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling, BIOMATH, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Ruben Jerves-Cobo

  4. Department of Environmental System`S Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Matti Barthel & Johan Six

  5. Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Isotope Bioscience Laboratory - ISOFYS, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Samuel Bode & Pascal Boeckx

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Contributions

Long Ho, conceptualization; methodology; software; data curation; writing–original draft preparation; visualization; and investigation. Ruben Jerves-Cobo, methodology; data curation; and writing–review and editing. Matti Barthel, methodology; data curation; writing–review; and editing. Johan Six, methodology; and writing–review and editing. Samuel Bode, methodology; data curation; and writing–review and editing. Pascal Boeckx, conceptualization; methodology; and writing–review and editing. Peter Goethals, writing–review and editing; project administration; funding acquisition; and supervision.

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Correspondence to Long Ho.

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Ho, L., Jerves-Cobo, R., Barthel, M. et al. Greenhouse gas dynamics in an urbanized river system: influence of water quality and land use. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 37277–37290 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-18081-2

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