31 Introduction and thesis outline Microbial communities including methanotrophs Sources Sinks Ocean Wetlands Biotechnology Atmospheric chemical reactions Potential methane sink Soil Lakes Agriculture and waste Fossil fuel production and burning Figure 1. Schematic diagram on the different sources and sinks of methane. Sizes of trees, industries and microbes are not to scale. Pink arrows show the sources of methane, agriculture and waste being the biggest anthropogenic source with about 217 teragrams of CH4 per year. Wetlands are the biggest natural sources of methane emissions with about 181 teragrams of CH4 per year. Other minor natural emissions of methane are inland waters, oceans, termites, wild animals, permafrost and vegetation. Methanotrophs and their metabolic partners can act as a methane biofilter in some environments such lakes and ocean depending on the microbial composition and the availability of electron acceptors. Orange arrows show the sinks of methane, atmospheric chemical degradation being the biggest sink with 518 teragrams of CH4 per year. Diverse methanotrophs could be cultivated and studied and further used in biotechnological applications to produce high-value natural products of interest to humans. Edited from (Cervantes et al., 2021) using Adobe Illustrator 2024 and the Integration and Application Network Symbol Library from the Center for Environmental Science of the University of Maryland (USA). Size of arrow is relative to the contribution to methane sink or source. 1
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