River systems provide ecosystem services crucial for sustaining rapidly expanding population centers in across Asia. Despite far-reaching environmental impacts, human-induced perturbations such as water pollution have rarely been linked to carbon (C) export and greenhouse gas (GHGs) evasion from Asian rivers. The proposed research aims to build a research network on C fluxes through Asian river systems to assess water pollution impacts on Asian rivers as a C source. The project will take a unique approach combining review and synthesis workshops and exploratory field studies. Each year a workshop will be held in a regional hub – Yellow River (East Asia), Mekong River (Southeast), and Ganges-Brahmaputra (South) – to synthesize long-term data available from local sources and to conduct a field trip and follow-up samplings. Standardized protocols for monitoring riverine C fluxes will be disseminated among project members and research communities via workshop sessions and dedicated web pages. Long-term data from local sources and new data from field studies will be integrated into regional-scale syntheses of riverine C fluxes and water quality to provide the first regional assessment of water pollution impacts on Asian rivers as a source of C to the atmosphere and recommendations for water management options integrating water quality and GHG emissions.
Project leader
Dr Frank Yonghong Li, Dean of College of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, China
“This workshop will also start the process of building community of experts and practitioners to effectively propagate and collaborate on carbon fluxes to assess water pollution impacts on Asian rivers as part of C sources. I am hoping that this regional collaboration will provide science-based policy recommendations on water management and climate change mitigation for sustainable water resource management in Asian region.”
Project publications
Sources, supply, and seasonality of total suspended matter and associated organic carbon and total nitrogen in three large Asian rivers—Ganges, Mekong, and Yellow
Seasonal shifts in diurnal variations of pCO2 and O2 in the lower Ganges River
Improving Carbonate Equilibria-Based Estimation of pCO2 in Anthropogenically Impacted River Systems
Reassessing riverine carbon dioxide emissions from the Indian subcontinent
Wastewater-boosted biodegradation amplifying seasonal variations of pCO2 in the Mekong–Tonle Sap river system
Localized Pollution Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Dynamics in Three Anthropogenically Modified Asian River Systems
The post-monsoon carbon biogeochemistry of the Hooghly–Sundarbans estuarine system under different levels of anthropogenic impacts
Comparing effects of untreated and treated wastewater on riverine greenhouse gas emissions
Export fluxes of dissolved inorganic carbon to the northern Indian Ocean from the Indian monsoonal rivers
Physically controlled CO 2 effluxes from a reservoir surface in the upper Mekong River Basin: a case study in the Gongguoqiao Reservoir
Gas transfer velocities of CO 2 in subtropical monsoonal climate streams and small rivers
