Publication Date:
2019-04-02
Description:
Studies that quantify plant methane (CH4) emission rely on the accurate measurement of small changes CH4 concentrations that coincide with much larger changes in the concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Here, we assessed if 11 commonly occurring VOCs (e.g., methanol, α- and β-pinene, ∆3-carene) interfered with CH4 concentrations measurements by five laser absorption spectroscopy and Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) based CH4 analysers, and quantified the interference of seven compounds on three instruments. Our results showed widespread interfere of 5 VOCs with FTIR based CH4 analysers, but only minimal interference with laser absorption spectroscopy based analysers. VOCs not included in the spectral library exerted a strong strong (64–1800 ppb apparent CH4/ppm VOC) bias on FTIR based measurements, which can lead to substancial over- and underestimations of CH4 fluxes. Minor (0.7–126 ppb/ppm) interferences with FTIR based measurements where also detected when the spectrum of the interfering VOC was included in the library. In contrast, we detected only minor (
Print ISSN:
1810-6277
Electronic ISSN:
1810-6285
Topics:
Biology
,
Geosciences
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