Methane production and methane consumption: a review of processes underlying wetland methane fluxes

Potential rates of both methane production and methane consumption vary over three orders of magnitude and their distribution is skew. These rates are weakly correlated with ecosystem type, incubation temperature, in situ aeration, latitude, depth and distance to oxic/anoxic interface. Anaerobic carbon mineralisation is a major control of methane production. The large range in anaerobic CH4:CO2 production rates indicate that a large part of the anaerobically mineralised carbon is used for reduction of electron accepters, and, hence, is not available for methanogenesis. Consequently, cycling of electron accepters needs to be studied to understand methane production. Methane and oxygen half saturation constants for methane oxidation vary about one order of magnitude. Potential methane oxidation seems to be correlated with methanotrophic biomass. Therefore, variation in potential methane oxidation could be related to site characteristics with a model of methanotrophic biomass.