Methane Sources in Lake Erie

On a late summer day on Lake Erie, what looks like an upside down bucket, surrounded by an inner tube and attached to hoses and wires, floats next to a Stone Lab research vessel. On the boat, a research team is taking air samples from below the bucket for later analysis, and measuring environmental conditions like air and water temperature.

Dr. Amy Townsend-Small and her students are measuring methane emissions from the surface of Lake Erie. Like carbon dioxide, methane acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, trapping heat and contributing to global warming. Globally, the major sources of methane are agriculture and industry – cattle operations, landfills, and leakage from natural gas pipelines – but one little-studied source of methane is decomposition of microscopic algae called phytoplankton in freshwater lakes such as Lake Erie.