Constraining Greenhouse Gas Cycling and Emissions in Africa's Largest Humic Lake
(2026) Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences — Vol. 131, n° 3, p. 20 (2026)
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JGRBiogeosciences-2026-Barthel-ConstrainingGreenhouseGasCyclingandEmissionsinAfricasLargestHumicLake.pdf
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- Authors
Drake, T. W. 
de Clippele, A. de Groot, L. W. Hemingway, J. D.
- Abstract
- Humic tropical lakes and wetlands are globally important sources of atmospheric greenhousegases (GHGs). However, mechanistic insight into GHG cycling in such systems remains limited—especially inunderstudied central Africa. To address this, here we measured high‐, falling‐, and low‐water seasonalconcentrations and isotopic compositions of the major dissolved GHGs CO2, CH4, and N2O in Africa's largesthumic lake: Mai Ndombe, Democratic Republic of Congo. We find that the water column is weakly to non‐stratified and is highly supersaturated with respect to atmospheric equilibrium for all GHGs across all seasons,sampling stations, and water depths. Additionally, all GHG concentrations increase steadily with increasingwater depth, reflecting atmospheric gas exchange due to physical mixing in the upper water column as well asbiological processes. Extrapolating these results—combined with field measurements such as temperature andwind speed—we estimate that Lake Mai Ndombe emits 375 ± 32 Gg C yr
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Citations
Barthel, M., Drake, T. W., de Clippele, A., de Groot, L. W., Engelhardt, M., Haghipour, N., Hou, Y., Kueter, N., Van Oost, K., Six, J., & Hemingway, J. D. (2026). Constraining Greenhouse Gas Cycling and Emissions in Africa’s Largest Humic Lake. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 131(3), 20. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025jg009218 (Original work published 2026)