Estimating lake metabolism requires approximating processes that influence the production and consumption of organic carbon by organisms within the lake. Cyclical changes on a daily scale occur in most lakes on Earth because sunlight is available for photosynthesis and production of new carbon only for a portion of the day. Researchers can take advantage of this diel pattern to measure rates of change in carbon itself or changes in dissolved gases such as carbon dioxide or oxygen that occur on a daily scale. Although daily estimates of metabolism are most common, whole-lake metabolism can be integrated over longer time periods such as seasonal or annual rates by estimating a whole-lake carbon budget. The following sections highlight the most common ways to estimate lake metabolism across a variety of temporal and spatial scales and go over some of the assumptions of each of these methods.