Published in

National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25(118), 2021

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2006857118

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Carbonate-hosted microbial communities are prolific and pervasive methane oxidizers at geologically diverse marine methane seep sites

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Significance Methane is a strong greenhouse gas that plays a key role in Earth’s climate. At methane seeps, large amounts of methane move upward through the seafloor, where microbial communities consume much of it. A full accounting of methane’s sources and sinks has evaded researchers—in part, perhaps, because key habitats including carbonate rock mounds have been largely neglected. We sampled seven methane seeps representing four geological settings and found that all sites had rock-hosted microbes capable of consuming methane; in lab-based incubations, some did so at the highest rates reported to date. We demonstrate several factors that help determine a sample’s methane-consuming potential and propose that carbonate rocks at methane seeps may represent a methane sink of far-reaching importance.