Photo Bleaching of Dissolved Organic Matter Enhances Abiotic Greenhouse Gas Emissions but Inhibits Biotic Emissions

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from aquatic sources is one of the essential processes in the global carbon cycling. The natural Fenton reaction is commonly occurring in sunlited environment, affecting the degradation of dissolved organic matters (DOMs) and many other biogeochemical processes. In order to evaluate the effect of natural Fenton reaction on the CH4 and CO2 emissions from DOMs, different sources (wetland surface water, wetland soil pore water, and plant litter leachates) of organic matters were incubated under controlled laboratory condition with different dosages of Fenton reagents and environmental conditions. The GHG emissions depended on the dose of Fenton-reagents, reaction time, temperature, and light intensity. Abiotically, the DOMs were photo-degraded into GHGs by both the direct and indirect photolysis. Yet biotically, the reactive oxidative species (ROSs) generated from sunlited waters inactivated the microbes and thus inhibited the biotic GHG emissions. Results of our experiments demonstrate that the dual roles of photo-bleaching of DOM on GHG emission from sunlited surface waters.