The Importance of Spatial Resolution in the Modeling of Methane Emissions from Natural Wetlands

An important uncertainty in the modeling of methane (CH4) emissions from natural wetlands is the wetland area. It is difficult to model wetlands' CH4 emissions because of several factors, including its spatial heterogeneity on a large range of scales. In this study, we investigate the impact of model resolution on the simulated wetland methane emission for the Fennoscandinavian Peninsula. This is carried out using a high-resolution wetland map (100 x 100 m(2)) and soil carbon map (250 x 250 m(2)) in combination with a highly simplified CH4 emission model that is coarsened in five steps from 0.005 degrees to 1 degrees. We find a strong relation between wetland emissions and resolution, which is sensitive, however, to the sub-grid treatment of the wetland fraction. In our setup, soil carbon and soil moisture are positively correlated at a high resolution, with the wetland location leading to increasing CH4 emissions with increasing resolution. Keeping track of the wetland fraction reduces the impact of resolution. However, uncertainties in CH4 emissions remain high because of the large uncertainty in the representation of wetland the area, as demonstrated using the output of the WetChimp intercomparison over our study domain. Because of wetland mapping uncertainties, existing models are unlikely to realistically represent the correlation between soil moisture and soil carbon availability. The correlation is positive in our simplified model but may be different in more complex models depending on their method of representing substrate availability. Therefore, depending on the correlation, CH4 emissions may be over- or underestimated. As increasing the model resolution is an effective approach to mitigate the problem of accounting for the correlation between soil moisture and soil carbon and to improve the accuracy of models, the main message of this study is that increasing the resolution of global wetland models, and especially the input datasets that are used, should receive high priority.

Automated summary

An important uncertainty in modeling methane emissions from natural wetlands is the wetland area. It is difficult to model wetlands' methane emissions due to various factors, including spatial heterogeneity at different scales. This study investigates the impact of model resolution on simulated wetland methane emissions and finds a strong relation between emissions and resolution, which is sensitive to the sub-grid treatment of the wetland fraction.