Engineering students visit Belwood Lake to measure methane levels

BELWOOD – Dr. Kyle Daun’s University of Waterloo Engineering students Mu-An Tsai, Avery Opalka, Ozge Gulsayin and Watcharakit Paengthai visited Belwood Lake on Oct. 27 to measure methane levels. Methane (CH4) has global warming potential approximately 80 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2). This, coupled with its shorter atmospheric lifetime, means CH4 emissions have a profound impact on climate change. Approximately half of Canada’s CH4 emissions originate from wetlands and waterways such as the Belwood reservoir. To understand these emissions, Universtiy of Waterloo researchers, assisted by the Belwood Lake Sailing Club and the Grand River Conservation Authority, are deploying advanced made-in-Canada technology, including a tunable diode laser and a hyperspectral camera, to “see” the CH4 emitted by the lake. These technologies exploit the fact that CH4 absorbs and emits light at infrared wavelengths, which is the same aspect that makes it a potent greenhouse gas, officials say.