Articles | Volume 14, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-1879-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-1879-2021
Research article
 | 
08 Mar 2021
Research article |  | 08 Mar 2021

Methane emissions from an oil sands tailings pond: a quantitative comparison of fluxes derived by different methods

Yuan You, Ralf M. Staebler, Samar G. Moussa, James Beck, and Richard L. Mittermeier

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Quantifying fugitive gas emissions from an oil sands tailings pond with open-path Fourier transform infrared measurements
Yuan You, Samar G. Moussa, Lucas Zhang, Long Fu, James Beck, and Ralf M. Staebler
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 945–959, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021, 2021
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Cited articles

Alberta Environment and Parks: Quantification of area fugitive emissions at oil sands mines, available at: https://open.alberta.ca/publications/9781460145814 (last access: 17 October 2020), 2019. 
Baray, S., Darlington, A., Gordon, M., Hayden, K. L., Leithead, A., Li, S.-M., Liu, P. S. K., Mittermeier, R. L., Moussa, S. G., O'Brien, J., Staebler, R., Wolde, M., Worthy, D., and McLaren, R.: Quantification of methane sources in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region of Alberta by aircraft mass balance, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 7361–7378, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-7361-2018, 2018. 
Bari, M. A. and Kindzierski, W. B.: Ambient volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in communities of the Athabasca oil sands region: Sources and screening health risk assessment, Environ. Pollut., 235, 602–614, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2017.12.065, 2018. 
Bolinius, D. J., Jahnke, A., and MacLeod, M.: Comparison of eddy covariance and modified Bowen ratio methods for measuring gas fluxes and implications for measuring fluxes of persistent organic pollutants, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 5315–5322, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-5315-2016, 2016. 
Covey, K. R. and Megonigal, J. P.: Methane production and emissions in trees and forests, New Phytol., 222, 35–51, https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15624, 2019. 
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Short summary
Tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands can be significant sources of methane, an important greenhouse gas. This paper describes a 1-month study conducted in 2017 to measure methane emissions from a pond using a variety of micrometeorological flux methods and demonstrates some advantages of these methods over flux chambers.
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