Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to climate warming. The open ocean is a minor source of methane to the atmosphere. We report intense methane emissions from the near-shore southern region of the North Sea characterized by the presence of extensive areas with gassy sediments. The average flux intensities (~130 μmol m(-2) d(-1)) are one order of magnitude higher th...

Bathymodiolin mussels dominate hydrothermal vent and cold seep communities worldwide. Symbiotic associations with chemosynthetic sulfur- and methane-oxidizing bacteria that provide for their nutrition are the key to their ecological and evolutionary success. The current paradigm is that these symbioses evolved from two free-living ancestors, one methane-oxidizing and one sulfur-oxidizing bacter...

Terrestrial tropical methane seep habitats are important ecosystems in the methane cycle. Methane oxidizing bacteria play a key role in these ecosystems as they reduce methane emissions to the atmosphere. Here, we describe the isolation and initial characterization of two novel moderately thermophilic and acid-tolerant obligate methanotrophs, assigned BFH1 and BFH2 recovered from a tropical met...

Identifying or ruling out groundwater discharges into sediment and surface waters is often critical for evaluating impacts and for planning remedial actions. Information about subsurface structure and groundwater can be helpful, but imperfect information, heterogeneous materials, and the likelihood of preferential pathways make it difficult to locate seeps without direct seep monitoring. We pre...