Reservoirs are contributing 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions
I found this article confusing:<p>&gt;There are three main differences between man-made reservoirs and lakes:<p>&gt;1.    Man-made reservoirs require flooding terrestrial land, supplying a large pulse of dead organic matter from trees and grasslands.  The timescale of how this happens to natural lakes is much longer.<p>&gt;2.    Man-made reservoirs experience greater fluctuations than natural lakes. As reservoirs reduce in volume, the weight of the water over the sediments drop freeing even more methane molecules from the confines of their origin.<p>&gt;3.    Man-made reservoirs are often closer to human activities, such as agricultural run-off containing fertilizers that can promote the growth of organic matter in the water.<p>Here one-off effects are mixed with ongoing effects which makes limited sense. Also agricultural run-off is mixed in. But if that is not producing methane in the reservoir then in will be producing methane elsewhere - cause and effect is mixed up. Then later on the alternative:<p>&gt; Groundwater recharge basins are regularly maintained to have less organic matter at the bottom, since it can clog the percolation of water into groundwater aquifers beneath.  In addition, recharge basins are shallower than man-made reservoirs and periodically become empty during dry periods when less water is available to recharge groundwater.<p>I&#x27;m confused about a shallower basin being less problematic as the methane is produced by the wet sediment. A shallower basin for the same amount of hydro power would be much larger.<p>What is miss is putting the generated methane in relationship with the generated energy.