Florida Ponds Creating an Ecosystem 'Disservice’ As It Lose More Carbon Through Gas

A new study recently found that Florida ponds are losing more carbon through gas than they're storing in the muck.

As indicated in a Phys.org report, according to the new research by the University of Florida, when one looks at ponds, he might see birds and fish, although he probably does not think about carbon. In fact, the 76,000 ponds of Florida store carbon abundantly, and a lot of it is escaping into the atmosphere.

According to Mary Lusk, a UF-IFAS assistant professor of soil and water sciences, the study finding means some ponds are "doing us an ecosystem disservice."

She added, worldwide, they expect that as urbanization continues, there will be more and more of these tiny man-made ponds in urban settings.

Carbon Entering the Atmosphere

This study, published in the journal, Communications Earth & Environment, will inform attempts of the scientists to approximate how much carbon is entering the atmosphere from these ponds on a regional basis.

Lusk, a faculty member at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, also explained that once people begin to understand them better, they're hoping they will take "stormwater ponds into account" for associated policies with carbon control.

The professor continued, stormwater ponds are all over Florida. However, they are understudied in terms of the manner they are affecting local ecosystems.

Since they are man-made parts of the landscape, these ponds are getting overlooked, and people might assume they are not essential ecologically.

Environmental Impacts of Ponds

The sheer number of ponds forced Lusk to investigate if they could have larger environmental impacts than people think. Originally, she wanted to focus on phosphorus and nitrogen that exist in ponds, although Audrey Goeckner, one of her students, wanted to study carbon.

Now a Ph.D. student in soil and water sciences on the main UF-IFAS Campus in Gainesville, Goeckner said it turns out that despite their small size, the ponds can quickly store and process carbon, which adds up when one considers how many of them are present in developed landscapes and how many keep on being built.

For this research, carried out as part of her master's thesis at GCREC, Goeckner developed a way to gauge the amount of carbon that leaves ponds. Even though she studied ponds in Manatee County, Goeckner's findings hold implications for emissions of pond carbon worldwide.

Gases Escaping from Ponds Each Year

In this research, the Ph.D. student found the quantity of the gases escaping from the ponds every year, and then she compared carbon stored in the pond muck against carbon lost through gaseous loss.

As a result, researchers now know that ponds are giving off more carbon than they are storing and that the amount lost is changing over the lifetime of a pond.

As Florida continues to grow, it will turn more urbanized. With the new development, frequently occurs new stormwater ponds which are not as good as storing carbon as older ones, explained Lusk.

Meanwhile, according to Goeckner, as ponds age, their biochemical and sediment properties may promote the amount of stored carbon, instead of emitted carbon as gas. That means better storage efficacy of organic carbon into the water, a related South Central Florida Life report specified.

Related information about stormwater ponds is shown on WaterMattersTV's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Carbon Emissions in Science Times.