and carbon mitigation into services paid for by markets. While economists recommended that the limited budget for this program be allocated among to the most efficient service providers the money ultimately went to rural communities
on current trends in forest biomass for energy in Europe carbon balance and the sustainable potential.
Recyclable material absorbs 82 percent of its weight in carbon dioxiderice University scientists have created an Earth-friendly way to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas at wellheads.
and other emissions it could well face new regulations Tour said noting the White house issued its latest National Climate Assessment last month and this week set new rules to cut carbon pollution from the nation
The Rice material a nanoporous solid of carbon with nitrogen or sulfur is inexpensive and simple to produce compared with the liquid amine-based scrubbers used now Tour said.
Rice graduate student Chih-Chau Hwang lead author of the paper first tried to combine amines with porous carbon.
The porous carbon powder he settled on has massive surface area and turns the neat trick of converting gaseous carbon dioxide into solid polymer chains that nestle in the pores.
This would never work on simple activated carbon; the key is that the polymer forms and provides continuous selectivity for carbon dioxide.
Methane ethane and propane molecules that make up natural gas may try to stick to the carbon but the growing polymer chains simply push them off he said.
The researchers treated their carbon source with potassium hydroxide at 600 degrees Celsius to produce the powders with either sulfur
After heating it to 600 degrees C for the one-step synthesis from inexpensive industrial polymers the final carbon material has a surface area of 2500 square meters per gram
Forests are also big carbon sinks that offset in part human-induced carbon emissions. Our finding also suggests the forest carbon sink may decrease in the U s. because of the slowdown in forest growth Tang says.
In some other countries young forests could grow faster and take up more carbon dioxide. To mitigate human-induced climate change
than climate in wood decomposition rates and the subsequent impacts on regional carbon cycling. Because decomposition of organic matter strongly influences the storage of carbon
or its release into the atmosphere it is a major factor in potential changes to the climate.
which may be more important in governing the release of terrestrial carbon. To better assess the importance of those local effects the researchers distributed 160 blocks of pine tree wood across five sub-regions of temperate forest in the eastern United states--from Connecticut to northern Florida
After 13 months they measured how much carbon had been lost whether absorbed by the microbes growing on the wood or directly into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
We have to cut down the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. The interdisciplinary team looked at a range of possible approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming.
reducing emissions sequestering carbon through biological means on land and in the ocean storing carbon dioxide in a liquefied form in underground geological formations and wells increasing Earth's cloud cover and solar reflection.
and low-carbon fuels would. Technology that is already available could reduce the amount of carbon being added to the atmosphere by some 7 gigatons per year the team found.
We have the technology and we know how to do it Cusack said. It's just that there doesn't seem to be political support for reducing emissions.
Of the five options the group evaluated sequestering carbon through biological means --or converting atmospheric carbon into solid sources of carbon like plants--holds the most promise.
One source curbing the destruction of forests and promoting growth of new forests could tie up as much as 1. 3 gigatons of carbon in plant material annually the team calculated.
Deforestation now is responsible for adding 1 gigaton of carbon each year to the atmosphere. Improving soil management is another biological means of carbon sequestration that holds considerable promise
because soils can trap plant materials that have converted already atmospheric carbon dioxide into a solid form as well as any carbon dioxide that the solids give off as they decompose.
Since the dawn of agriculture tilling land has led to the loss of about half (55 to 78 gigatons) of the carbon ever sequestered in soil the team reports.
But such simple steps as leaving slash--the plant waste left over after crop production--on fields after harvests so it could be incorporated into the soil could reintroduce between 0. 4 and 1. 1 gigatons of carbon annually to soil the study says.
The approach would also improve soil's ability to retain nutrients and water making it beneficial for additional reasons.
So the approach can work to keep carbon that has become bound up in plant life from decaying
which sequesters carbon. The approach ranked as the study's least viable strategy in part
because less than a quarter of the algae could be expected to eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean which would be the only way that carbon would be sequestered for a long period of time.
The study's second most promising climate engineering strategy after carbon sequestration was carbon capture and storage particularly when the technique is used near where fuels are being refined.
CCS turns carbon dioxide into a liquid form of carbon which oil and coal extraction companies then pump into underground geological formations and wells and cap;
millions of tons of carbon are already being stored this way each year. And the approach has the potential to store more than 1 gigaton permanently each year
--and up to 546 gigatons of carbon over time--the study says. However a liquid carbon leak could be fatal to humans
and other animals and the risk--while minimal--may stand in the way of public acceptance.
Food and carbon sequestrations are fine and may even rise under the various scenarios but you may need strong incentives to limit declines in the provision of other ecosystem services.
Wetter and more fertile soilssample analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions--a technique used in crop physiology
On one hand Carbon isotope composition enables to evaluate water availability for crops. It reached its maximum level 9000 years ago
They cover seven percent of land surface yet hold more than 30 percent of Earth's terrestrial carbon.
As abandoned agricultural land in the tropics is taken over by forests scientists expect these new forests to mop up industrial quantities of atmospheric carbon.
and may even cause tropical forests to lose carbon. In the first study to experimentally demonstrate that competition between plants can result in ecosystem-wide losses of forest carbon scientists working in Panama showed that lianas
or woody vines can reduce net forest biomass accumulation by nearly 20 percent Researchers called this estimate conservative in findings published this month in Ecology.
As lianas increase in tropical forests they will lower the capacity for tropical forests to accumulate carbon.
They account for up to 25 percent of the woody plants in a typical tropical forest but only a few percent of its carbon.
They do not compensate for displaced carbon due to relatively low wood volume low wood density and a high rate of turnover.
After collecting eight years of data comparing liana-free plots with naturally liana-filled plots in the same forest they quantified the extent to which lianas limited tree growth hence carbon uptake.
--and nearly all of the aboveground carbon is stored in trees said Schnitzer. Lianas have been shown to consistently hinder the recruitment of small trees and limit the growth fecundity and survival of established trees.
Scientists have assumed that the battle for carbon is a zero-sum game in which the loss of carbon from one plant is balanced by the gain of carbon by another.
This assumption however is now being challenged because lianas prevent trees from accumulating vast amounts of carbon
but lianas cannot compensate in terms of carbon accumulation said Schnitzer. If lianas continue to increase in tropical forests they will reduce the capacity for tropical forests to uptake carbon
which will accelerate the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon worldwide. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Climate change and the future of sweet cherry in Australiapredicted variations in global climates have fruit producers trying to determine which crops are suited best to weathering future temperature changes.
Extreme high-temperature events are expected to become more frequent and predictive models suggest that the global mean surface air temperature will rise by as much as two degrees by the middle of the 21st century.
#Rules to cut carbon emissions also reduce air pollution harmful to people, environmentsetting strong standards for climate-changing carbon emissions from power plants would provide an added bonus--reductions in other air pollutants that can make people sick;
damage forests crops and lakes; and harm fish and wildlife. This according to a first-of-its-kind study released today by scientists at Syracuse University
and Harvard who mapped the potential environmental and human health benefits of power plant carbon standards.
The authors of the new study Co-benefits of Carbon Standards: Air pollution Changes under Different 111d Options for Existing Power plants use three policy options for the forthcoming EPA rule as a guide to model changes in power plant emissions of four other harmful
One of the policy options we analyzed cut emissions of these non-carbon pollutants by approximately 75000 tons per year by 2020 Driscoll said.
It features detailed maps illustrating the benefits of decreased emissions from roughly 2400 power plants for every 12x12km area of the continental United states. With a strong carbon standard improvements are widespread and every state receives some benefit.
Our analysis demonstrates that strong carbon standards could also have widespread benefits to air quality
The U s. EPA is expected to release its proposed rules for carbon pollution from existing power plants June 2.
and carbon content in diesels and oils from January 2015. Aston University (UK) scientists are involved in the Reship project
The Rice researchers behind a new study that explains the creation of nanodiamonds in treated coal also show that some microscopic diamonds only last seconds before fading back into less-structured forms of carbon under the impact of an electron beam.
while working on ways to chemically reduce carbon from anthracite coal and make it soluble. First they noticed nanodiamonds forming amid the amorphous hydrogen-infused layers of graphite.
Unexpectedly the energy input congealed clusters of hydrogenated carbon atoms some of which took on the latticelike structure of nanodiamonds.
and his colleagues at the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials in Moscow to explain what the chemists saw.
In this case the electron microscope's beam knocks hydrogen atoms loose from carbon layers. Then the dangling bonds compensate by connecting to an adjacent carbon layer
which is prompted to connect to the next layer. The reaction zips the atoms into a matrix characteristic of diamond until pressure forces the process to halt.
Billups noted subsequent electron-beam experiments with pristine anthracite formed no diamonds while tests with less-robust infusions of hydrogen led to regions with onion-like fringes of graphitic carbon but no fully formed diamonds.
since each organism competes with others in trading nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen the system as a whole may function more like a capitalistic market economy than a cooperative symbiotic relationship.
The competition among trees makes them export excessive amounts of carbon to the fungi which seize a lot of soil nutrients.
and the plants where each individual trades carbon for nutrients or vice versa to maximize profits not unlike a capitalistic market economy says Franklin
As more carbon becomes available to the trees the limitation of nitrogen generated by mycorrhizae becomes even more important possibly eliminating
and surface wildfires can result in an annual loss of 54 billion tonnes of carbon from the Brazilian Amazon increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
This is equivalent to 40%of the yearly carbon loss from deforestation --when entire forests are chopped down.
and belowground carbon loss from selective logging and ground level forest fires in the tropics based on data from 70000 sampled trees and thousands of soil litter and dead wood samples from 225 sites
The combination of selective logging and wildfires damages turns primary forests into a thick scrub full of smaller trees and vines which stores 40%less carbon than undisturbed forests.
So far climate change policies on the tropics have effectively been focusing on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation only not accounting for emissions coming from forest degradation.
Yet our results show how these disturbances can severely degrade the forest with huge amounts of carbon being transferred from plant matter straight into the atmosphere.
Bringing fire and illegal logging under control is key to reaching our national commitment to reducing carbon emissions.
Forests can either supply carbon to the atmosphere or remove it says UW-Madison geography Professor Jack Williams director of the Nelson Center for Climatic Research.
Some ecosystem models predict that forests will store more carbon over this century but others say they will release more.
because forests store such a vast amount of carbon and because carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas and therefore a major regulator of earth's temperature.
An ice core from the center of the ice sheet demonstrated that exceptionally warm temperatures combined with black carbon sediments from Northern hemisphere forest fires reduced albedo below a critical threshold in the dry snow region
but the presence of a high concentration of ammonium concurrent with the black carbon indicates the ash's source was large boreal forest fires during the summer in Siberia and North america in June and July 2012.
Borneoâ##s productive trees vitally important for global carbon cyclinga team of scientists has found that the woody growth of forests in North borneo is half as great again as in the most productive forests of northwest Amazonia
The new study published today in the Journal of Ecology examined differences in aboveground wood production (one component of the total uptake of carbon by plants)
which is critically important in the global cycling of carbon. Trees are taller for a given diameter in Southeast asia compared with South america meaning they gain more biomass per unit of diameter growth
whether plant species composition matters at all to fundamental ecosystem functions such as productivity or carbon storage.
and sequester carbon is vitally important for managing them best to keep carbon out of the atmosphere.
--and thus not soak up as much atmosphere-polluting carbon--under such a plan. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by San francisco State university.
#Switch from cattle fields to carbon farms could tackle climate change, save endangered animals cheaplychanging cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change
Researchers from leading universities including the University of Sheffield carried out a survey of carbon stocks biodiversity and economic values from one of the world's most threatened ecosystems the western Andes of Colombia.
Under carbon markets designed to stop global warming they could get paid to change the use of their land from growing cows to'growing carbon'--receiving around US$1. 99 per tonne of carbon dioxide the trees remove from the atmosphere.
and they would be paid for the carbon grown. We studied older forests that are around 20-30 years old and found they had recovered around half of the carbon of a really mature forest.
More carbon comes back every single year and as it does so large numbers of highly threatened species return.
The impact on reducing the biodiversity extinction crisis and climate change could be huge. The study also found that letting forests regenerate had a massive impact on the populations of threatened species. In secondary forests in the region researchers found 33 of 40 red-listed bird species that are threatened with extinction.
#Determining biocontainers carbon footprintmany efforts to reduce the environmental impacts associated with commercial horticulture production have failed to influence the general public.
The impacts were presented in terms of contribution to the carbon footprint or global warming potential (GWP) of a single finished plant in a 10-cm-diameter container.
which food production--and other services such as carbon storage flood mitigation and locking up pollutants--depends.
Intensive farming often results in significant declines in soil organic carbon stocks as well as reducing the ability of soils to store water and nutrients and damaging soil structure which can lead to soil erosion.
She measured a range of soil properties including soil organic carbon levels total nitrogen and the ratio between carbon and nitrogen
allotment soil had 32%more organic carbon 36%higher carbon to nitrogen ratios 25%higher nitrogen
For example 95%of allotment holders compost their allotment waste so they recycle nutrients and carbon back to their soil more effectively.
Environmentalists counter that it imperils millions of hectares of forest threatening to release the billions of tons of carbon they contain.
New public initiatives like Brazil's Low-Carbon Agriculture Program which provides US$1. 5 billion in annual subsidized loans to improve agricultural production
while reducing associated carbon emissions are also key. Such initiatives will be critical if Brazil hopes to succeed in reconciling environmental conservation and agricultural development.
#Amazon rainforest survey could improve carbon offset schemescarbon offsetting initiatives could be improved with new insights into the make-up of tropical forests a study suggests.
The findings will enable researchers to assess more accurately the amount of carbon each tree can store.
This is a key factor in carbon offset schemes in which trees are given a cash value according to their carbon content
and credits can be traded in exchange for preserving trees. Existing satellite maps of the area have estimated trees'carbon content based largely on their height
but have not accounted for large regional variations in their shape and density. Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds who led the research say their findings could help quantify the amount of carbon available to trade in areas of forest.
This could help administer carbon offsetting more accurately and improve understanding of how much carbon is stored in the world's forests
which informs climate change forecasts. Scientists studied a database of thousands of tree species taken from more than 400 hectare-sized plots across the nine countries of the Amazon basin--Brazil Bolivia Colombia Ecuador French guiana Guyana Peru Suriname
and Venezuela. The survey was developed as part of a sister project known as RAINFOR involving more than 200 researchers across the region.
Their research found that forests in the basin's northeast on average stored twice as much carbon as those in the southwest as a result of soil climate and species variation.
Scientists say this highlights the need to recognise that carbon is distributed not uniformly in the forest.
Satellite maps of the world's forests don't contain enough information about their carbon content.
but species really matter for carbon. This is the big challenge for the next generation of satellite and field scientists.
and structure of the Congo rainforest affecting its biodiversity and carbon storage. Previous research used satellite-based measurements of vegetation greenness to investigate changes in the Amazon rainforest notably the effects of severe short-term droughts in 2005 and 2010.
The nanoreporter is sized based on nanometer carbon material developed by a consortium of Rice labs led by chemist James Tour
Now the same team joined by chemist Angel Martã is employing thermally stable soluble highly mobile carbon black-based nanoreporters modified to look for hydrogen sulfide and report results immediately upon their return to the surface.
and other biofuels reduces soil carbon and can generate more greenhouse gases than gasoline according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Importantly they found the rate of carbon emissions is constant whether a small amount of stover is removed
If less residue is removed there is less decrease in soil carbon but it results in a smaller biofuel energy yield Liska said.
and reduced soil carbon the study suggests planting cover crops to fix more carbon in the soil.
Until now scientists have not been able to fully quantify how much soil carbon is lost to carbon dioxide emissions after removing crop residue.
They've been hampered by limited carbon dioxide measurements in cornfields by the fact that annual carbon losses are comparatively small and difficult to measure
which was funded through a three-year $500000 grant from the U s. Department of energy used carbon dioxide measurements taken from 2001 to 2010 to validate a soil carbon model that was built using data from 36 field studies across North america Europe Africa and Asia.
and Wisconsin had the highest net loss of carbon from residue removal because they have cooler temperatures and more carbon in the soil.
The research has been in progress since 2007 involving the coordinated effort of faculty staff and students from four academic departments at UNL.
and horticulture to adapt Yang's soil carbon model and with Andrew Suyker an associate professor in the School of Natural resources to validate the model findings with field research.
Pelton's master's degree thesis reprogrammed the soil carbon model while Fang developed a method to incorporate carbon dioxide emissions into life cycle assessments of cellulosic ethanol.
#No-till soil organic carbon sequestration rates publishedfor the past 20 years researchers have published soil organic carbon sequestration rates.
 Many of the research findings have suggested that soil organic carbon can be sequestered by simply switching from moldboard or conventional tillage systems to no-till systems.
and soybean rotations without cover crops small grains and forages may not be increasing soil organic carbon stocks at the published rates. â#oesome studies have shown that both moldboard
and no-till systems are actually losing soil organic carbon stocks over timeâ#said University of Illinois soil scientist Ken Olson who led the review.
and Ohio who studied the published soil science and tillage literature related to soil organic carbon sequestration storage retention and loss.
and summary papers 120 papers on all sides of the soil organic carbon sequestration storage retention and loss issue were selected for review
and moldboard plots at the end of a long-term study is only a measure of net soil organic carbon storage difference between treatments
and does not support soil organic carbon sequestration claims. No-till systems on sloping and eroding sites retain more soil organic carbon in the surface from 0 to 15 centimeters
when compared to moldboard as a result of less disturbance and less soil erosion and transport of soil organic carbon-rich sediment off the plots. â#oethe subsurface layers also need to be sampled
and tested to the depth of rooting or 1 or 2 metersâ#Olson said. â#oethat no-till subsurface layer is often losing more soil organic carbon stock over time than is gained in the surface layer. â#During the analysis of the work Olson said that it became apparent that there were a number
of reasons for the conflicting findings including the definition of soil organic carbon sequestration used by different researchers.
The team proposed the definition of soil sequestration be: the process of transferring CO2 from the atmosphere into the soil of a land unit through unit plants plant residues and other organic solids
To claim soil organic carbon sequestration management practices must lead to an increase in the net soil organic carbon from a previous pre-treatment baseline measurement
 Carbon not directly originated from the atmosphere (from outside the land unit) cannot be counted as sequestered soil organic carbon.
and sediment-rich carbon deposition on a soil located on a lower landscape position or in a waterway.
or prairie with defined and identified boundaries The team identified a number of other methodological factors that could lead to errors in reported soil organic carbon sequestration rates including:
not accounting for carbon in amendments being loaded on the plots from external sources; use of different soil organic carbon laboratory methodsâ over the long-term study;
effects of soil erosion; transport and deposition on the experimental tillage plots; Â lack of sloping
and before the tillage treatment was applied that the soil organic carbon had dropped 20 to 50 percent
and lack of cover crops can all result in reduced soil organic carbon stocks. Because it would take 20 to 50 more years to design
Olson said that the accuracy of determining soil organic carbon sequestration depends on the method used. â#oein this review both the paired comparison method
and the pre-treatment soil organic carbon method were tested using the same plots and experimentâ#he said.
The results of this comparison showed that the paired-method (no-till compared to moldboard) overestimated soil organic carbon sequestration as compared to pre-treatment method where both no-till
and measure soil organic carbon sequestration rates no longer use the comparison method and adopt the pre-treatment soil organic carbon method
and (2) that existing long-term studies that researchers want to use to determine soil organic carbon sequestration rates be stopped temporarily
and sampled following the soil organic carbon sequestration protocol outlined in their article. â#oebecause these long-term studies are used for crop-yield determinations they need to be restarted without interruption
and soil sampling can be done during the non-growing seasonâ#Olson said. â#oethen the long-term experiments can be used to measure soil organic carbon sequestration rates. â#Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences (ACES.
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