Spatial and Temporal Fluxes of Greenhouse Gases in the River Tay Catchment

River networks link the terrestrial landscape with the atmosphere and oceans, and are now believed to contribute significantly to global budgets of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). However, there remains much uncertainty regarding the production and emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and few studies have quantified GHG concentrations and saturations from source to sea. These data sets, collected during a PhD studentship awarded to James Harley, provide information about the spatial and temporal dynamics of dissolved GHGs from a network of sites encompassing both the River Tay’s freshwater catchment (data set 1) and its estuary (data set 2). Data set 1 provides monthly water chemistry and GHG data from nine sampling sites spanning the River Tay catchment, collected from Feb 2009 to Dec 2010. Data set 2 provides data from 12 boat-based axial surveys of the Tay estuary conducted between Apr 2009 and Jul 2011, where sampling took place at 10 fixed point sampling sites spanning the salinity gradient. Together these data sets provide an overview of GHG dynamics from source-to-sea in the UK’s largest river by volume.