Changhui Peng Jinxun Liu Hong Jiang Xiuqin Fang Huai Chen Zhichun Niu Peng Gong Guanghui Lin Meng Wang Yanzheng Yang Jie Chang Ying Ge Wenhua Xiang Xiangwen Deng Jin-Sheng He Qiuan Zhu 2016 <p><span>Both anthropogenic activities and climate change can affect the biogeochemical processes of natural wetland methanogenesis. Quantifying possible impacts of changing climate and wetland area on wetland methane (CH</span>₄<span>) emissions in China is important for improving our knowledge on CH</span>₄<span> budgets locally and globally. However, their respective and combined effects are uncertain. We incorporated changes in wetland area derived from remote sensing into a dynamic CH</span>₄<span> model to quantify the human and climate change induced contributions to natural wetland CH</span>₄<span> emissions in China over the past three decades. Here we found that human-induced wetland loss contributed 34.3% to the CH</span>₄<span> emissions reduction (0.92 TgCH</span>₄<span>), and climate change contributed 20.4% to the CH</span>₄<span> emissions increase (0.31 TgCH</span>₄<span>), suggesting that decreasing CH</span>₄<span> emissions due to human-induced wetland reductions has offset the increasing climate-driven CH</span>₄<span> emissions. With climate change only, temperature was a dominant controlling factor for wetland CH</span>₄<span> emissions in the northeast (high latitude) and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (high altitude) regions, whereas precipitation had a considerable influence in relative arid north China. The inevitable uncertainties caused by the asynchronous for different regions or periods due to inter-annual or seasonal variations among remote sensing images should be considered in the wetland CH</span>_4&nbsp;<span>emissions estimation.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1038/srep38020 en Macmillan Journals Ltd. Climate-driven increase of natural wetland methane emissions offset by human-induced wetland reduction in China over the past three decades article