Underworld holds vital clues to carbon cycle puzzle

More trees and more vigorous vegetation growth may not soak up atmospheric carbon, according to new research.

Instead, more lusty tree roots could goad the soil microbe population into releasing as carbon dioxide so much more old carbon stored in the soil.  And since the planet’s store of soil carbon is at least twice the quantity locked in the vegetation and the atmosphere, this could in turn accelerate global warming.

This is yet another example of what engineers call positive feedback, but the important word here is “could”.  The question remains open.

Benjamin Sulman − a biologist at Indiana University, but then of the Princeton University Environmental Institute in the US − and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they have developed a new computer model to examine what really happens, on a global scale, when plants colonize the soil and start taking in moisture and carbon from the atmosphere.

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