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Recent studies have suggested that in certain environments, tree stems emit methane (CH₄). This study explored the mechanism of CH₄ emission from the stem surfaces of Alnus japonica in a riparian wetland. Stem CH₄ emission rates and sap flux were monitored year-round, and fine-root anatomy was investigated. CH₄ emission rates were estimated using a closed-chamber method. Sap flux was measured using Granier-type thermal dissipation probes. Root anatomy was studied using both optical and cryo-scanning electron microscopy. CH₄ emissions during the leafy season exhibited a diurnally changing component superimposed upon an underlying continuum in which the diurnal variation was in phase with sap flux. We propose a model in which stem CH₄ emission involves at least two processes: a sap flux-dependent component responsible for the diurnal changes, and a sap flux-independent component responsible for the background continuum. The contribution ratios of the two processes are season-dependent. The background continuum possibly resulted from the diffusive transport of gaseous CH₄ from the roots to the upper trunk. Root anatomy analysis indicated that the intercellular space of the cortex and empty xylem cells in fine roots could serve as a passageway for transport of gaseous CH₄., 木の中にガスパイプライン？ --ガス漏れの場所を特定せよ！--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-07-15.

Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions due to quasi-continuous and high-temporal-resolution CH4 flux measurements, coincident carbon dioxide, water, and energy flux measurements, lack of ecosystem disturbance, and increased availability of datasets over the last decade. Here, we (1) describe the newly published dataset, FLUXNET-CH4 Version 1.0, the first open-source global dataset of CH4 EC measurements (available at https://fluxnet.org/data/fluxnet-ch4-community-product/, last access: 7 April 2021). FLUXNET-CH4 includes half-hourly and daily gap-filled and non-gap-filled aggregated CH4 fluxes and meteorological data from 79 sites globally: 42 freshwater wetlands, 6 brackish and saline wetlands, 7 formerly drained ecosystems, 7 rice paddy sites, 2 lakes, and 15 uplands. Then, we (2) evaluate FLUXNET-CH4 representativeness for freshwater wetland coverage globally because the majority of sites in FLUXNET-CH4 Version 1.0 are freshwater wetlands which are a substantial source of total atmospheric CH4 emissions; and (3) we provide the first global estimates of the seasonal variability and seasonality predictors of freshwater wetland CH4 fluxes. Our representativeness analysis suggests that the freshwater wetland sites in the dataset cover global wetland bioclimatic attributes (encompassing energy, moisture, and vegetation-related parameters) in arctic, boreal, and temperate regions but only sparsely cover humid tropical regions. Seasonality metrics of wetland CH4 emissions vary considerably across latitudinal bands. In freshwater wetlands (except those between 20∘ S to 20∘ N) the spring onset of elevated CH4 emissions starts 3 d earlier, and the CH4 emission season lasts 4 d longer, for each degree Celsius increase in mean annual air temperature. On average, the spring onset of increasing CH4 emissions lags behind soil warming by 1 month, with very few sites experiencing increased CH4 emissions prior to the onset of soil warming. In contrast, roughly half of these sites experience the spring onset of rising CH4 emissions prior to the spring increase in gross primary productivity (GPP). The timing of peak summer CH4 emissions does not correlate with the timing for either peak summer temperature or peak GPP. Our results provide seasonality parameters for CH4 modeling and highlight seasonality metrics that cannot be predicted by temperature or GPP (i.e., seasonality of CH4 peak). FLUXNET-CH4 is a powerful new resource for diagnosing and understanding the role of terrestrial ecosystems and climate drivers in the global CH4 cycle, and future additions of sites in tropical ecosystems and site years of data collection will provide added value to this database. All seasonality parameters are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4672601 (Delwiche et al., 2021). Additionally, raw FLUXNET-CH4 data used to extract seasonality parameters can be downloaded from https://fluxnet.org/data/fluxnet-ch4-community-product/ (last access: 7 April 2021), and a complete list of the 79 individual site data DOIs is provided in Table 2 of this paper.

While wetlands are the largest natural source of methane (CH4 ) to the atmosphere, they represent a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget due to the complex biogeochemical controls on CH4 dynamics. Here we present, to our knowledge, the first multi-site synthesis of how predictors of CH4 fluxes (FCH4) in freshwater wetlands vary across wetland types at diel, multiday (synoptic), and seasonal time scales. We used several statistical approaches (correlation analysis, generalized additive modeling, mutual information, and random forests) in a wavelet-based multi-resolution framework to assess the importance of environmental predictors, nonlinearities and lags on FCH4 across 23 eddy covariance sites. Seasonally, soil and air temperature were dominant predictors of FCH4 at sites with smaller seasonal variation in water table depth (WTD). In contrast, WTD was the dominant predictor for wetlands with smaller variations in temperature (e.g., seasonal tropical/subtropical wetlands). Changes in seasonal FCH4 lagged fluctuations in WTD by ~17±11days, and lagged air and soil temperature by median values of 8±16 and 5±15days, respectively. Temperature and WTD were also dominant predictors at the multiday scale. Atmospheric pressure (PA) was another important multiday scale predictor for peat-dominated sites, with drops in PA coinciding with synchronous releases of CH4 . At the diel scale, synchronous relationships with latent heat flux and vapor pressure deficit suggest that physical processes controlling evaporation and boundary layer mixing exert similar controls on CH4 volatilization, and suggest the influence of pressurized ventilation in aerenchymatous vegetation. In addition, 1- to 4-h lagged relationships with ecosystem photosynthesis indicate recent carbon substrates, such as root exudates, may also control FCH4. By addressing issues of scale, asynchrony, and nonlinearity, this work improves understanding of the predictors and timing of wetland FCH4 that can inform future studies and models, and help constrain wetland CH4 emissions.

Methane (CH4) is one of the major greenhouse gases, and therefore its source identification and quantification are quite important. So far water-unsaturated soils of upland forests are usually recognized as sinks, but recent increasing evidence supports tree stems in certain environments can be a source of CH4, and thereby research on the dynamics of CH4 in forest ecosystems has entered a new phase. In this study, we measured vertical distributions of CH4 concentrations within and above a forest canopy to examine how they are influenced by local ecological processes and synoptic-to local-scale atmospheric processes. Profile measurements were conducted using a meteorological tower in a temperate Japanese cypress forest with a 30-min time resolution. Time series data of CH4 concentrations above the canopy at our site showed occasional spikes relative to background levels, and these spikes corresponded with temporal variations in CO2 concentrations. Backward trajectory analyses showed that most of the air masses associated with the spikes in CH4 and CO2 concentrations had continental origins. Seasonal-mean diurnal properties in CH4 concentrations above and within the canopy were weaker than those for CO2 concentrations. It was considered likely that nighttime accumulation of CH4 in a stable surface layer and its convective diffusion into a mixed layer accounted for the diurnal properties in CH4, while ecological processes played a major role in the diurnal properties observed in CO2 levels. Vertical distributions in CH4 concentration within the canopy showed a monotonic decrease from the canopy to the forest floor, with variations depending on the season. The profiles agreed with soil-atmosphere CH4 fluxes measured using a closed-chamber method at our site, indicating that the surface soil in upland areas plays a major role for determining the within-canopy distributions of CH4. Also, it was inferred that at least at our site, CH4 emissions from stems and leaves, which has become a hot topic over the recent years, was not significant for cypress trees in upland area enough to influence the within-canopy distributions of CH4 during the study period.

Time series of wetland methane fluxes measured by eddy covariance require gap-filling to estimate daily, seasonal, and annual emissions. Gap-filling methane fluxes is challenging because of high variability and complex responses to multiple drivers. To date, there is no widely established gap-filling standard for wetland methane fluxes, with regards both to the best model algorithms and predictors. This study synthesizes results of different gap-filling methods systematically applied at 17 wetland sites spanning boreal to tropical regions and including all major wetland classes and two rice paddies. Procedures are proposed for: 1) creating realistic artificial gap scenarios, 2) training and evaluating gap-filling models without overstating performance, and 3) predicting half-hourly methane fluxes and annual emissions with realistic uncertainty estimates. Performance is compared between a conventional method (marginal distribution sampling) and four machine learning algorithms. The conventional method achieved similar median performance as the machine learning models but was worse than the best machine learning models and relatively insensitive to predictor choices. Of the machine learning models, decision tree algorithms performed the best in cross-validation experiments, even with a baseline predictor set, and artificial neural networks showed comparable performance when using all predictors. Soil temperature was frequently the most important predictor whilst water table depth was important at sites with substantial water table fluctuations, highlighting the value of data on wetland soil conditions. Raw gap-filling uncertainties from the machine learning models were underestimated and we propose a method to calibrate uncertainties to observations. The python code for model development, evaluation, and uncertainty estimation is publicly available. This study outlines a modular and robust machine learning workflow and makes recommendations for, and evaluates an improved baseline of, methane gap-filling models that can be implemented in multi-site syntheses or standardized products from regional and global flux networks (e.g., FLUXNET). ISSN:0168-1923 ISSN:1873-2240

Learning about the gas exchange dynamic (evapotranspiration and photosynthesis) relating to precipitation and leaf wetness is important for understanding the forest hydrological and carbon sink function. Precipitation can lead to the change in meteorological factors, depression on leaf gas exchange as well as increasing CO2 emission from soil. However, few studies fully consider the effect of these changes in ecosystem scale.This study conducted continuous eddy covariance measurement over a temperate evergreen Japanese cypress forest canopy in the Asian monsoon area from 2016 to 2019. By applying the eddy covariance method with the enclosed path gas analyzer, evapotranspiration and CO2 exchange from the canopy to the atmosphere during and after rainfall and snow are precisely monitored. The chamber method is used to simultaneously measure the soil respiration. Especially, to reveal the mechanism of wet canopy gas exchange mechanism, a SVAT multilayer model with two rainfall interception solution (Model 1: free gas exchange with interception only by the adaxial surface; Model 2: no gas exchange with interception by both surfaces) is applied to figure out the interception distribution over the leaf surface.The annual average daytime latent heat flux (λE) was 70.92 W m-2, 22.31 W m-2, 139.40 W m-2 for wet canopy, snow-loaded canopy and the first 6 hours after wetness ended; the annual average daytime net ecosystem exchange was -1.9 μmol m-2s-1, -0.42 μmol m-2s-1, -7.43 μmol m-2s-1 for wet canopy, snow-loaded canopy and the first 6 hours after wetness ended. Correspondingly, the annual average daytime soil CO2 flux was 2.53 μmol m-2s-1, 0.26 μmol m-2s-1, 2.93 μmol m-2s-1 when the canopy was wet, snow-loaded and during the first 6 hours after wetness ended. The gas exchange at the first 6 hours after wet is more active than that of wet canopy and snow-loaded canopy despite rainfall increased the CO2 emission from the soil. Both measured data and simulation show the wet canopy can process gas exchange. The simulation showed that both interception situations are possible to happen but Model 1 is more suitable for this temperate forest. Meanwhile, the difference between the two models’ performance is smaller during the rainfall than in the wet period after the rainfall, which means interception distribution had a larger impact on wet canopy gas exchange at the later wet period. Future studies should also concern about the mechanism and effect of gas exchange dynamics relating to different precipitation patterns and water sources for latent heat flux.

Methane (CH4) emissions from natural landscapes constitute roughly half of global CH4 contributions to the atmosphere, yet large uncertainties remain in the absolute magnitude and the seasonality of emission quantities and drivers. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of CH4 flux are ideal for constraining ecosystem-scale CH4 emissions, including their seasonality, due to quasi-continuous and high temporal resolution of flux measurements, coincident measurements of carbon, water, and energy fluxes, lack of ecosystem disturbance, and increased availability of datasets over the last decade. Here, we 1) describe the newly published dataset, FLUXNET-CH4 Version 1.0, the first global dataset of CH4 EC measurements (available at https://fluxnet.org/data/fluxnet-ch4- community-product/). FLUXNET-CH4 includes half-hourly and daily gap-filled and non gap-filled aggregated CH4 fluxes and meteorological data from 79 sites globally: 42 freshwater wetlands, 6 brackish and saline wetlands, 7 formerly drained ecosystems, 7 rice paddy sites, 2 lakes, and 15 uplands. Then, we 2) evaluate FLUXNET-CH4 representativeness for freshwater wetland coverage globally, because the majority of sites in FLUXNET-CH4 Version 1.0 are freshwater wetlands and because freshwater wetlands are a substantial source of total atmospheric CH4 emissions; and 3) provide the first global estimates of the seasonal variability and seasonality predictors of freshwater wetland CH4 fluxes. Our representativeness analysis suggests that the freshwater wetland sites in the dataset cover global wetland bioclimatic attributes (encompassing energy, moisture, and vegetation-related parameters) in arctic, boreal, and temperate regions, but only sparsely cover humid tropical regions. Seasonality metrics of wetland CH4 emissions vary considerably across latitudinal bands. In freshwater wetlands (except those between 20° S to 20° N) the spring onset of elevated CH4 emissions starts three days earlier, and the CH4 emission season lasts 4 days longer, for each degree C increase in mean annual air temperature. On average, the onset of increasing CH4 emissions lags soil warming by one month, with very few sites experiencing increased CH4 emissions prior to the onset of soil warming. In contrast, roughly half of these sites experience the spring onset of rising CH4 emissions prior to the spring increase in gross primary productivity (GPP). The timing of peak summer CH4 emissions does not correlate with the timing for either peak summer temperature or peak GPP. Our results provide seasonality parameters for CH4 modeling, and highlight seasonality metrics that cannot be predicted by temperature or GPP (i.e., seasonality of CH4 peak). The FLUXNET-CH4 dataset provides an open-access resource for CH4 flux synthesis, has a range of applications, and is unique in that it includes coupled measurements of important CH4 drivers such as GPP and temperature. Although FLUXNET-CH4 could certainly be improved by adding more sites in tropical ecosystems and by increasing the number of site-years at existing sites, it is a powerful new resource for diagnosing and understanding the role of terrestrial ecosystems and climate drivers in the global CH4 cycle. All seasonality parameters are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4408468. Additionally, raw FLUXNET-CH4 data used to extract seasonality parameters can be downloaded from https://fluxnet.org/data/fluxnet-ch4-community-product/, and a complete list of the 79 individual site data DOIs is provided in Table 2 in the Data Availability section of this document., Earth System Science Data Discussions, ISSN:1866-3591

It has been recently reported that silicon (Si) increases methane (CH4) emission from peats through mobilizing phosphorus and organic carbon bound to iron minerals and stimulating microbial activities. However, it is unknown whether this effect of Si applies in other environments, such as warm temperate forest soils that function primarily as a CH4 sink but occasionally as a CH4 source. We tested our hypothesis that CH4 emission should increase with Si availability in warm temperate forest soils under anaerobic conditions, by incubating four soil samples collected from a variety of topographic positions in the Kiryu Experimental Watershed, in Shiga, Japan. The soil characteristics including soil pH and total phosphorus and iron contents varied among the soils. Much greater CH4 emission was observed in the soils from the riparian wetland areas than in those from the upland areas. The onset of methanogenesis was not accelerated by Si addition during the incubation. At the end of the incubation, the Si addition did not increase total CH4 production from the soils. A lack of the Si effects would be due to low quantities of phosphorus retained by iron minerals in the entire area of this watershed and high abundance of more potent electron acceptors in the upland. Overall, our results suggest that increasing Si availability exerts little influence on CH4 emissions from warm temperate forest soils under the used experimental conditions in this watershed.

Data on ecosystem-scale methane (CH4 ) fluxes in tropical peatlands are currently lacking in the global CH4 budget. Although the waterlogged Indonesian peatlands contain the largest share of peat carbon in South-East Asia, ecosystem-scale CH4 budgets have not yet been reported, although these peatlands have the potential to emit CH4 . We observed 1-year variations in the ecosystem-scale CH4 flux in an undrained secondary peat swamp forest in central Kalimantan, Indonesia, using the eddy covariance method. We found that the peat swamp forest switched from being a CH4 sink during the dry season (as low as -8.9 mg C m-2 day-1 ) to a source of CH4 during the wet season (up to 10.7 mg C m-2 day-1 ), and this was dependent on changes in the groundwater level (GWL). The high GWL during the wet season enhanced the anaerobic CH4 production in the surface layer that had more labile organic matter. However, the CH4 emission also increased when the GWL dropped during dry spells in the wet season. The annual CH4 budget in the studied tropical peat swamp forest (0.09-0.17 g C m-2 year-1 ) was much lower than that in northern, temperate, and subtropical wetlands. We found that CH4 fluxes had almost no effect on the global warming gas budget of the peat swamp forest, and values were only a few percent less than the CO2 fluxes at the same site. In addition, we conducted anaerobic soil incubation experiments to examine the effect of land-use change on CH4 production. The results indicated much higher CH4 production potential in undrained forest soil than in drained or drained and burned ex-forest soils. However, although CH4 production decreased in drained soils relative to undrained soils, conserving pristine peat swamp forests with high GWLs is important to suppress global warming because CO2 emissions increase in drained peatlands.

Season-long methane ( CH 4 ) exchange was observed in a rice paddy field in central Japan (Kanto Region) using the eddy covariance technique to clarify the variations in environmental controls on CH 4 exchange in different stages of cultivation. Before heading of rice plant, the CH 4 emission depended on wind speed and soil temperature. The soil temperature dependence can be due to an increase in CH 4 production, higher molecular diffusion, and higher conductance within rice plant at higher soil temperature. An occurrence of ebullitive emission was also suggested from the wind speed dependence. After heading was completed, relative humidity and water temperature influenced CH 4 emission. The amplitude of the diurnal variation in emission increased from 0.03 μ mol m − 2 s − 1 in the late pre-heading stage to 0.13 μ mol m − 2 s − 1 in the post-heading stage. Induced convective throughflow within the rice aerenchyma after the change in plant structure was attributable to this variation in environmental controls after the heading. After drainage, CH 4 emission was confined to short periods after strong rain events. The water level controlled the timing of emission, most likely by influencing the diffusion efficiency from the anoxic soil to the atmosphere and CH 4 oxidation in the surface oxic zone. The variation in the dominant transport pathway needs to be accounted for in terrestrial ecosystem models to accurately predict CH 4 emission from rice paddies.

Forest soils are considered a methane (CH4) sink because dry soils can oxidize CH4; however, previous studies on CH4 fluxes in humid temperate forests indicated a high spatial and temporal variability in CH4 fluxes, especially in CH4 emissions from wet soils close to riparian zones, which can turn the soil of a whole forest from a CH4 sink to a CH4 source. In this study, the spatial and temporal variability of soil CH4 fluxes was investigated in a Japanese coniferous forest, including a riparian wetland and a hillslope water-unsaturated forest floor, based on multipoint flux measurements using laser-based CH4 analyzers over a period of 2 years. We identified CH4 emission hot spots (60.2 ± 169.1 nmol m−2 s−1 from 117 sampling points) in the wetland in late summer, while the CH4 absorption rate in the forest floor was comparatively lower (−1.2 ± 1.4 nmol m−2 s−1 from 119 sampling points). The temporal variability of watershed-scale CH4 flux was amplified by a clear seasonal cycle of soil temperature and rainfall pattern under the Asian monsoon climate. The watershed-scale CH4 budget showed that the forest turned into a CH4 source during the summer owing to the high and variable CH4 emissions from the riparian wetland and the lower part of the hillslope. Overall, our results indicated that CH4 emissions from small riparian areas are important in controlling forest CH4 dynamics at a watershed scale.

Ecosystem-scale methane (CH 4 ) exchange was observed in a poorly-drained black spruce forest over permafrost in interior Alaska during the snow-free seasons of 2011–2013, using the eddy covariance technique. The magnitude of average CH 4 exchange differed depending on wind direction, reflecting spatial variation in soil moisture condition around the observation tower, due to elevation change within the small catchment. In the drier upper position, the seasonal variation in CH 4 emission was explained by the variation in soil water content only. In the wetter bottom, however, in addition to soil temperature and soil water content, seasonal thaw depth of frozen soil was also an important variable explaining the seasonal variation in CH 4 exchange for this ecosystem. Total snow-free season (day of year 134–280) CH 4 exchanges were 12.0 ± 1.0, 19.6 ± 3.0, and 36.6 ± 4.4 mmol m −2 season −1 for the drier upper position, moderately wet area, and wetter bottom of the catchment, respectively. Observed total season CH 4 emission was nearly one order smaller than those reported in other northern wetlands, due probably to the relatively low ground water level and low soil temperature. The interannual variation of total snow-free season CH 4 emission in the wetter bottom of the catchment was influenced by the amount of rainfall and thaw depth. On the other hand, in the drier upper position the amount of rainfall did not strongly affect the total season CH 4 emission. Different responses of CH 4 exchange to environmental conditions, depending on the position of a small catchment, should be considered when estimating the spatial variation in CH 4 exchange accurately in ecosystems over permafrost.

We examined the effects of Asian monsoon rainfall on CH4 absorption of water-unsaturated forest soil. We conducted a 1 year continuous measurement of soil CH4 and CO2 fluxes with automated chamber systems in three plots with different soil characteristics and water content to investigate how temporal variations in CH4 fluxes vary with the soil environment. CH4 absorption was reduced by the “Baiu” summer rainfall event and peaked during the subsequent hot, dry period. Although CH4 absorption and CO2 emission typically increased as soil temperature increased, the temperature dependence of CH4 varied more than that of CO2, possibly due to the changing balance of activities between methanotrophs and methanogens occurring over a wide temperature range, which was strongly affected by soil water content. In short time intervals (30 min), the responses of CH4 and CO2 fluxes to rainfall were different for each plot. In a dry soil plot with a thick humus layer, both fluxes decreased abruptly at the peak of rainfall intensity. After rainfall, CO2 emission increased quickly, while CH4 absorption increased gradually. Release of accumulated CO2 underground and restriction and recovery of CH4 and CO2 exchange between soil and air determined flux responses to rainfall. In a wet soil plot and a dry soil plot with a thinner humus layer, abrupt decreases in CH4 fluxes were not observed. Consequently, the Asian monsoon rainfall strongly influenced temporal variations in CH4 fluxes, and the differences in flux responses to environmental factors among plots caused large variability in annual budgets of CH4 fluxes.

The relaxed eddy accumulation (REA) method is an attractive alternative to the eddy covariance method to measure trace-gas flux, because it allows the use of analyzers with an optimal integration time to reduce the noise. However, the use of an empirical coefficient b results in uncertainties in the REA method. The consistency of b for temperature was investigated using a 1 year dataset obtained at three forest sites in East Asia: a temperate evergreen coniferous forest, a tropical evergreen broadleaf forest, and a cool-temperate deciduous coniferous forest. The observational b ranged from 0.54 to 0.57 under unstable conditions. Although the values for observational b were within narrow ranges among the sites, there were slight site-specific differences. We introduced new expression of b, similarity b, based on scalar similarity using the integral turbulence characteristics to investigate the nature of b. Both the observational and similarity b increased with increasing atmospheric stability under stable conditions, when lower values for the standard deviation of the vertical wind velocity resulted in higher values for b. The variations in b under stable conditions differed among sites. There were no seasonal variations in the observational b at all sites. Consequently, the present study recommends determining the coefficient b for unstable conditions for each site and considering changes in b associated with atmospheric stability in order to minimize errors in the REA method.

We defined gas exchange phenology as the seasonality of the gas exchange characteristics of a forest canopy, and investigated how the gas exchange phenology could be directly detected from an eddy covariance (EC) dataset and its influence on the canopy fluxes within an evergreen Japanese cypress forest. For the detection of gas exchange phenology, we derived three bulk parameters of the extended big-leaf model (Kosugi et al. 2005) inversely from EC flux data over a 7-year period: surface conductance (g c), maximum rate of carboxylation of the “big leaf” (V CMAX), and intercellular CO2 concentration of the “big leaf” (C I). The relationship between g c and the vapor pressure deficit declined in winter and spring. The relationship between the daily ecosystem respiration and air temperature was greater in the spring than in the other seasons. The temperature dependence curve of V CMAX decreased substantially in the winter and was different from that of an evergreen broadleaved forest. A decrease in C I was occasionally coupled with the decrease in canopy gross primary production during April and August, indicating that stomatal closure was responsible for a decline in canopy photosynthesis. Gas exchange phenology should be quantified when understanding the determining factors of the seasonality of canopy fluxes at evergreen coniferous forests.

Very few studies have conducted long-term observations of methane (CH4) flux over forest canopies. In this study, we continuously measured CH4 fluxes over an evergreen coniferous (Japanese cypress) forest canopy throughout 1 year, using a micrometeorological relaxed eddy accumulation (REA) system with tuneable diode laser spectroscopy (TDLS) detection. The Japanese cypress forest, which is a common forest type in warm-temperate Asian monsoon regions with a wet summer, switched seasonally between a sink and source of CH4 probably because of competition by methanogens and methanotrophs, which are both influenced by soil conditions (e.g., soil temperature and soil moisture). At hourly to daily timescales, the CH4 fluxes were sensitive to rainfall, probably because CH4 emission increased and/or absorption decreased during and after rainfall. The observed canopy-scale fluxes showed complex behaviours beyond those expected from previous plot-scale measurements and the CH4 fluxes changed from sink to source and vice versa.

Continuous in situ measurements of methane (CH4) fluxes from intact leaves and trunk of Japanese cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa Sieb. et Zucc) were conducted in a temperate forest from August 2009 to August 2010. An automated closed-chamber system, which was used to evaluate CO2 exchange between the atmosphere and forest ecosystems, was coupled to a laser-based instrument to monitor CH4 concentrations. Temporal changes in CH4 concentrations from the foliage and trunk were measured at one-second intervals during chamber closure to determine CH4 fluxes between the leaf and trunk surfaces and the atmosphere. While recent studies have suggested that some plants emit CH4 under aerobic conditions, emission or uptake of CH4 in detectable amounts with our experimental system, by intact leaves or the trunk of C. obtusa, was not significantly observed throughout the measurement period.