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Aquatic ecosystems are major sources of greenhouse gases (GHG). Robust measurements of natural GHG emissions are vital for evaluating regional to global carbon budgets and for assessing climate feedbacks on natural emissions to improve climate models. Diffusive and ebullitive (bubble) transport are two major pathways of gas release from surface waters. To capture the high temporal variability of these fluxes in a well-defined footprint, we designed and built an inexpensive device that includes an easily mobile diffusive flux chamber and a bubble counter, all in one. In addition to automatically collecting gas samples for subsequent various analyses in the laboratory, this device also utilizes a low cost carbon dioxide (CO2) sensor (SenseAir, Sweden) and methane (CH4) sensor (Figaro, Japan) to measure GHG fluxes. Each of the devices were equipped with an XBee module to enable a local radio communication (DigiMesh network) for time synchronization, and data readout at a server-controller station on the lakeshore. Software of this server-controller is operated on a low-cost computer (Raspberry Pi) which has a 3G connection for remote control and monitor functions from anywhere in the world. This study shows the potential of a low cost automatic sensor network system to study GHG fluxes on lakes in remote locations.
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Duc et al. (2019) studied this question.