Besides the atmospheric impacts wildfires also modify terrestrial ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration soil fertility grazing value biodiversity and tourism.
and plants he says can reveal a lot about carbon cycling which is so central for applying the work to climate change today.
Many environmental factors leave an imprint on the carbon contained in tree trunks from this period.
The high latitudes today contain the largest amount of carbon locked up as organic material and permafrost soils On earth today he says.
It actually exceeds the amount of carbon you can measure in the rain forests. So what happens to that stockpile of carbon
when you warm it and grow a forest over it is completely unknown. Another unknown is
First fully integrated artificial photosynthesis nanosystemin the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable
Solar technologies are the ideal solutions for carbon-neutral renewable energy--there's enough energy in one hour's worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year.
Published today 10 may in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters it shows that deforestation will not only reduce the capacity of the Amazon's natural carbon sink
They're primarily concerned with land conversion--high carbon stock land or lands that are high in biodiversity values Endres said.
She stressed that international harmonization is vital for the aviation industry because of looming compliance mandates for carbon reductions in Europe.
To land a plane in Europe U s. carriers will have to prove that they have reduced their carbon footprint below a certain level.
So even though we think we're achieving rural development receiving carbon reductions or climate mitigation benefits or that we're having increased energy security people may still be suspicious of biomass fuels
#U s. urban trees store carbon, provide billions in economic value, finds state-by-state analysisfrom New york city's Central park to Golden gate Park in San francisco America's urban forests store an estimated 708 million tons of carbon an environmental service with an estimated value
of $50 billion according to a recent U s. Forest Service study. Annual net carbon uptake by these trees is estimated at 21 million tons and $1. 5 billion in economic benefit.
In the study published recently in the journal Environmental Pollution Dave Nowak a research forester with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station
and six states and national tree cover data to estimate total carbon storage in the nation's urban areas.
Carbon storage is just one of the many benefits provided by the hardest working trees in America.
Nationally carbon storage by trees in forestlands was estimated at 22.3 billion tons in a 2008 Forest Service study;
additional carbon storage by urban trees bumps that to an estimated 22.7 billion tons. Carbon storage and sequestration rates vary among states based on the amount of urban tree cover and growing conditions.
States in forested regions typically have the highest percentage of urban tree cover. States with the greatest amount of carbon stored by trees in urban areas are Texas (49.8 million tons) Florida (47.3 million tons) Georgia (42.4 million tons) Massachusetts (39.6
million tons) and North carolina (37.5 million tons. The total amount of carbon stored and sequestered in urban areas could increase in the future as urban land expands.
Urban areas in the continental U s. increased from 2. 5 percent of land area in 1990 to 3. 1 percent in 2000 an increase equivalent to the area of Vermont and New hampshire combined.
The study is not the first to estimate carbon storage and sequestration by U s. urban forests however it provides more refined statistical analyses for national carbon estimates that can be used to assess the actual and potential role of urban forests in reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
More urbanization does not necessarily translate to more urban trees. Last year Nowak and Eric Greenfield a forester with the Northern Research Station and another study co-author found that urban tree cover is declining nationwide at a rate of about 20000 acres per year or 4 million
Carbon Storage by Urban Treesstate: Carbon Stored (tons) Total 708100000the mission of the U s. Forest Service is to sustain the health diversity
and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.
and relinquish more carbon than expectedit's difficult to imagine how a degree or two of warming will affect a location.
The approach foresees big changes for one of the planet's great carbon sponges. Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century.
Along the way the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict.
This vegetation stores vast amounts of carbon keeping it out of the atmosphere where it can contribute to climate change.
This means that boreal ecosystems are expected to store even more carbon than they do today. But the Berkeley Lab research tells a different story.
Grassland stores a lot of carbon in its soil but it accumulates at a much slower rate than is lost from diminishing forests.
Most Earth system models don't predict this which means they overestimate the amount of carbon that high-latitude vegetation will store in the future he adds.
He also investigated how this shift will transport the carbon stored in the vegetation that grows in the gridcell's climate.
Only one of the Earth system models shows this precipitous loss of carbon in southern boreal forests.
In addition Earth system models predict carbon loss by placing vegetation at a given point and then changing various climate properties above it.
While 50 years of inorganic fertilization did increase soil organic carbon stocks in a long-term experiment in western Kansas the practice seemingly failed to enhance soil aggregate stability--a key indicator of soil
which in turn can boost soil organic carbon levels. But unexpectedly in this case we didn't see improvement in soil aggregate stability
even though soil organic carbon concentration increased Blanco says noting that soil particles usually bind together more strongly in aggregates as soil organic carbon concentrations rise.
When he tested soils from the experimental plots he saw soil organic carbon concentrations rise gradually with increases in nitrogen fertilization at soil depths from 0 to 6 inches although not at deeper ones.
Similarly phosphorus fertilization increased soil organic carbon at depths of 0 to 3 inches and 6 to 12 inches.
Some studies suggest that adding fertilizers rich in ammonium ions may cause soil particles to disperse rather than aggregate thereby offsetting any positive effects of increased soil organic carbon content.
--either directly or via electricity generated by solar cells--to convert the end products of hydrocarbon combustion water and carbon dioxide back into a carbon-based fuel.
A very promising route to making a carbon-containing fuel is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide (or carbon monoxide) using solar-produced hydrogen said Fujita who leads the artificial photosynthesis group in the Brookhaven Chemistry department.
The Brookhaven team had identified already some promising leads with experiments demonstrating the potential effectiveness of low-cost molybdenum paired with carbon as well as the use of nitrogen to confer some resistance to the corrosive acidic environment required in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis cells.
The students set out to identify plentiful and inexpensive sources of carbon and nitrogen and test ways to combine them with a molybdenum salt.
and the carbon and nitrogen components of the soybeans to produce molybdenum carbides and molybdenum nitrides Chen explained.
The presence of nitrogen and carbon atoms in the vicinity of the catalytic molybdenum center facilitates the production of hydrogen from water Muckerman said.
The other factor that Bowne will test in the future is the sequestration of carbon. Along with the carbon dioxide efflux data in the current study information about carbon sequestration would give a bigger picture of carbon cycling.
That picture could then help researchers determine how various land uses as well as management practices such as no-till agriculture
or leaving grass clippings on lawns can change the carbon cycling. If we go from one land use to another land use how does that impact carbon cycling
which in turn can affect climate change? Our current study touches on one component of that cycle and more research is needed to address this huge topic says Bowne.
and reduce carbon emissions from deforestation. This incentive-based approach is comparatively inexpensive as low agricultural yields
They found they could reproduce the oxygen-18 enrichment of the two grains by mixing small amounts of material from the oxygen-rich inner zones and the oxygen-18-rich helium/carbon zone with large
although the carbon footprint aspect of sustainability receives the most attention nutritional aspects are also important.
and reduce carbon emissions from deforestation. This incentive-based approach is comparatively inexpensive as low agricultural yields
#Maya Long Count calendar calibrated to modern European calendar using carbon-14 datingthe Maya are famous for their complex intertwined calendric systems
A combination of high-resolution accelerator mass spectrometry carbon-14 dates and a calibration using tree growth rates showed the GMT correlation is correct.
This same lintel was one of three analyzed in the previous carbon-14 study. Researchers measured tree growth by tracking annual changes in calcium uptake by the trees which is greater during the rainy season.
The amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is incorporated into a tree's incremental growth.
Atmospheric carbon-14 changes through time and during the Classic Maya period oscillated up and down. The researchers took four samples from the lintel
The researchers used this information to fit the four radiocarbon dates to the wiggles in the calibration curve.
Wiggle-matching the carbon-14 dates provided a more accurate age for linking the Maya
These calculations were complicated further by known differences in the atmospheric radiocarbon content between northern and southern hemisphere.
The complication is that radiocarbon concentrations differ between the southern and northern hemisphere said Kennett. The Maya area lies on the boundary and the atmosphere is a mixture of the southern and northern hemispheres that changes seasonally.
Organic substances are simply those containing carbon. An example of an organic salt is one that forms when an organic acid reacts with
The study showed that the biggest mitigation potential lies in cutting emissions from agriculture such as livestock production as well as in managing forests effectively to increase their role as a carbon sink.
Amy Townsend-Small a UC assistant professor of geology and geography will present her research Carbon Sequestration
either be a small sink--meaning they store carbon--or a small source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
For her research Townsend-Small monitored the carbon uptake and storage--known as carbon sequestration--in the soil of urban lawns in Los angeles and Cincinnati.
Despite the extreme climate variation between the two regions she found the lawns had surprisingly similar abilities to absorb carbon and store it in soils.
Townsend-Small found that while having a well-cared-for lawn will improve its carbon-quelling capacity intensive lawn care isn't worth the atmospheric side effects.
and fossil fuel energy expended to keep lawns looking lush consumes so much energy that it counteracts the soil's natural carbon sequestration abilities.
This means more lawns don't require irrigation helping reduce the carbon cost of lawn maintenance and preserve the carbon sequestration benefits.
and preserve the carbon storage in soils. Townsend-Small's research could prove useful to cities businesses
When measuring your carbon footprint remember to thoroughly evaluate what's underfoot. Urban green space usually gets a lot of credit for all the benefits to the atmosphere Townsend-Small says.
Fossil fuels are responsible for the annual release of nearly nine billion metric tons of excess carbon into the atmosphere.
while changing the triglyceride oil paradigm by their ability to tailor the oil profiles by carbon chain and saturation.
According to the study 2. 7 billion tonnes of CO2 or 30%of the carbon emissions associated with deforestation in the last decade was exported from Brazil.
The data will be used to evaluate how much carbon the forests contain and assess their vulnerability to human and natural disturbances.
#Soils in newly forested areas store substantial carbon that could help offset climate changesurface appearances can be so misleading:
In most forests the amount of carbon held in soils is substantially greater than the amount contained in the trees themselves.
If you're a land manager trying to assess the potential of forests to offset carbon emissions
and climate change by soaking up atmospheric carbon and storing it what's going on beneath the surface is critical.
and predict the amount of aboveground carbon accumulating in a forest the details of soil-carbon accounting have been a bit fuzzy.
Two University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues helped to plug that knowledge gap by analyzing changes in soil carbon that occurred
U-M ecologist Luke Nave and his colleagues found that in general growing trees on formerly nonforested land increases soil carbon.
Previous studies have been equivocal about the effects of so-called afforestation on soil carbon levels. Collectively these results demonstrate that planting trees
or allowing them to establish naturally on nonforested lands has a significant positive effect on the amount of carbon held in soils said Nave an assistant research scientist at the U-M Biological Station and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
These forest soils represent a significant carbon reservoir that is helping to offset carbon emissions that lead to climate change said Nave lead author of the paper.
Large and rapid increases in soil carbon were observed on forested land that had previously been used for surface mining
On a post-mining landscape the amount of soil carbon generally doubled within 20 years of mining termination
and portions of the Midwest--takes about 40 years to cause a detectable increase in soil carbon.
But at the end of a century's time the amount of soil carbon averages 15 percent higher than when the land was under cultivation with the biggest increases (up to 32 percent) in the upper two inches of the soil.
In places where trees and shrubs have encroached into native grassland soil carbon increased 31 percent after several decades according to the study.
and managing the carbon balance of U s. lands by putting a number on the changes in soil carbon that occur during this sort of land-use transition Nave said.
Most of the organic carbon in forest soils comes from the growth and death of roots and their associated fungi he said.
The study involved a reexamination of 46 research papers published between 1957 and 2010 as well as an analysis of 409 soil profiles from the National Soil Carbon Network database.
#Even graphene has weak spotsgraphene the single-atom-thick form of carbon has become famous for its extraordinary strength.
As the need for carbon sequestration biofuels and other forest products increases the study suggests that there might be unintended consequences to enhancing ecosystems using fertilization.
The trees also have other ecosystem functions in the form of carbon sequestration and effects on nutrient cycling and retention.
greener concrete with biofuel byproductskansas State university civil engineers are developing the right mix to reduce concrete's carbon footprint
By using these materials we can reduce the carbon footprint of concrete materials. Concrete is made from three major components:
It also means a smaller carbon footprint and Ecovative is hoping to the point where they can displace all plastics
slowing decomposition and allowing soil carbon and other nutrients to accumulate; and inhibiting the invasion of aggressive nonnative species including Scotch broom and hairy cat's ear.
and Degradation+scheme require rainforest stability in effect locking carbon within the trees. The research team comprised climate scientists
and deforestation will also affect the carbon stored in tropical forests. Their impacts are also difficult to simulate.
To help control carbon emissions the government has set targets to increase woodfuel production but this will be hard to achieve
not only for the pulp and paper industry but also for any business wishing to reduce its carbon footprint.
and is considered by many to be a separate species. They play a vital role in maintaining the biodiversity of one of Earth's critical carbon sequestering tropical forests.
and in coprolites from ancient sites and dated with over 200 Carbon-14 dates. After years of study Haas and his colleagues have concluded that during the Late Archaic maize (Zea mays
A total of 212 radiocarbon dates were obtained in the course of all the excavations. Macroscopic remains of maize (kernels leaves stalks and cobs) were rare.
Post said that the next step in his research will be to study the contribution of plant diversity to long-term stability of carbon dynamics in the atmosphere and in the soil.
#Scientists explore new technologies that remove atmospheric carbon dioxidein his Feb 12 State of the Union address President Obama singled out climate change as a top priority for his second administration.
The administration has taken a number of steps to meet those goals such as investing billions of dollars in wind solar and other carbon-neutral energy technologies.
The solution they say could also require developing carbon-negative technologies that remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.
In the GCEP report Field and lead author Jennifer Milne describe a suite of emerging carbon-negative solutions to global warming--from bioenergy technologies to ocean sequestration.
Many of the examples cited were presented initially at a negative carbon emissions workshop hosted by GCEP in 2012.
As a carbon-negative technology BECCS takes advantage of the innate ability of trees grasses
To make the process carbon negative researchers have proposed a BECCS co-fired power plant that runs on a mixture of fossil fuel (such as coal) and vegetation (wood grass or straw for example.
To meet ambitious climate targets a cost-effective policy would be to implement a carbon tax
A carbon tax would put a price on CO2 emissions and increase the competitiveness of CCS while an emission subsidy would encourage BECCS deployment she added.
Biocharfield and Milne also assessed the pros and cons of biochar--a carbon-negative technology based on the same principal as BECCS.
Heating vegetation slowly without oxygen--a process called pyrolysis--produces carbon-rich chunks of biochar that can be placed in the soil as fertilizer.
Like BECCS the goal is to permanently lock carbon underground instead of letting CO2 re-enter the atmosphere as the plant decomposes.
Implementing biochar technology on a global scale could result in the sequestration of billions of metric tons of carbon a year they added.
In this model the system took 18 years to recoup carbon emissions with most reductions coming from soil replenishment from root growth
The report also explored the possibility of sequestering carbon in the ocean with a particular focus on the problem of ocean acidification
Keith has launched also a startup company called Carbon Engineering that's developing industrial-scale machines--artificial trees--that are designed to capture CO2 directly from the air.
Following the 2012 negative-emissions workshop GCEP issued an international request for proposals to develop net-negative carbon emissions technologies.
Forests store about 45 percent of the carbon found on land remarked William. Widespread tree death can radically transform ecosystems affecting biodiversity posing fire risks
They looked at both carbon starvation and water-transportation stress and found no evidence of significantly decreased carbon reserves.
They did find a notable depressed function in the trees'water-transport systems especially in the roots--some 70 percent loss of water conductivity.
and carbon mineralization--to see what information these inexpensive tests might give them. Their results suggest that simple measures of labile organic matter can reflect long-term management
After collecting soil from the different fields the scientists then measured carbon and nitrogen mineralization.
What's nice about carbon and nitrogen mineralization is they're based on actual biological activity says Culman.
A long-term cropping system trial provided the perfect opportunity to test the extent to which carbon
The researchers also found that carbon mineralization was a better predictor of corn agronomic performance than other measures that are used currently (pre-sidress nitrate test and leaf chlorophyll.
Under most circumstances that carbon stays locked inside Earth's rigid continental crust. One process that can release carbon dioxide from these carbonates is interaction with magma he said.
But if this effect declines or climate warming occurs due to something other than a carbon dioxide increase we expect to see a significant release of carbon from tropical ecosystems.
whether tropical forests are absorbing carbon dioxide or releasing it--and this in turn depends on whether the tropical climate was warmer and dryer than usual or wetter and cooler.
The team studied how these year-to-year variations in carbon dioxide concentration relate to long-term changes in the amount of carbon stored in tropical rainforests.
By combining this relationship with the year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide as seen in the real world the team were able to determine that about 50 billion tonnes of carbon would be released for each Degree celsius of warming in the tropics.
Fortunately this carbon release is counteracted by the positive effects of carbon dioxide fertilisation on plant growth under most scenarios of the 21st century
so that overall forests are expected to continue to accumulate carbon. The researchers are however certain that tropical forests will suffer under climate change
Science and policy in the Amazon have focused largely on forests and their associated biodiversity and carbon stocks.
but it will help locallyafforestation planting trees in an area where there have previously been no trees can reduce the effect of climate change by cooling temperate regions finds a study in Biomed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management.
and cooler sequestering carbon protecting biodiversity and air quality and preventing soil erosion. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biomed Central Limited.
if laboratories striving to grow graphene from carbon atoms kept winding up with big pesky diamonds.
Boron atoms have a strong preference to clump into three-dimensional shapes rather than assemble into pristine single-atom sheets like carbon does
Boron is carbon's neighbor on the periodic table with one less electron which might bring in lots of new physics and chemistry especially on the nanoscale.
It forms at the global minimum (energy) for carbon atoms--they go there willingly. But boron is a different story.
which production system farmers used beef production has a carbon footprint ranging from 10.7 to 22.6 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of hot carcass weight.
The industry has reduced also its carbon footprint by 16.3 percent per billion kilograms of beef produced.
According to Mitloehner beef producers can further reduce their carbon impact by using new technologies like growth promotants.
and that the burning of fossil fuels is releasing an additional 9 billion metric tons of excess atmosphere-warming carbon each year both the planet and the American economy stand to benefit from a large-scale domestic advanced
#Emission trading schemes limit green consumerismschemes that aim to regulate greenhouse gas emissions can limit consumers'attempts to reduce their carbon footprints according to an economist at the University of East Anglia (UEA.
He argues that understanding what polices such as the EU ETS cover is crucial for individuals wanting to contribute to reducing their carbon footprint
and improving the insulation of your home substantially reduces your carbon footprint. These unregulated sectors make up more than half of GHG emissions in participating countries
He suggests that carbon footprint labels measuring the life-cycle emissions of a product do not give consumers helpful guidance on how to reduce actual emissions
and those that are notmy analysis shows that basing decisions to reduce carbon footprints on both regulated and unregulated emissions as recommended by government agencies NGOS
and established carbon footprint labels can increase total emissions said Dr Perino whose findings are based on a mathematical model of consumption choices.
Prof Corinne Le Qu r director of UEA's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research which works to develop sustainable responses to climate change urged consumers to continue their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
It is critical that we significantly reduce our carbon emissions to tackle climate change she said.
and easiest way to reduce our own carbon emissions. This discussion paper takes a viewpoint at the level of individuals on the consequences of the European Emissions Trading scheme
I strongly urge people to pursue their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint whether they live within Europe or within any other industrialised economy.
increasing uptake of carbon dioxidetrees in the con ti nen tal U s. could send out new spring leaves up to 17 days ear lier in the com ing cen
#Shedding light on role of Amazon forests in global carbon cycleearth's forests perform a well-known service to the planet absorbing a great deal of the carbon dioxide pollution emitted into the atmosphere from human activities.
or wind their decay also releases carbon back into the atmosphere making it critical to quantify tree mortality
This new tool will enhance understanding of the role of forests in carbon sequestration and the impact of climate change on such disturbances.
which need to be included in forest carbon budgets Their findings were published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
which carbon is exchanged among the atmosphere the ocean the biosphere and Earth's crust. Fewer trees mean not only a weakening of the forest's ability to absorb carbon
but the decay of dead trees will also release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Large-scale tree mortality in tropical ecosystems could
The researchers estimated that hundreds of millions of trees were destroyed potentially equivalent to a significant fraction of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation for the Amazon forest.
The carbonin those trees which would eventually be released into the atmosphere as CO2 as the trees decompose was about equal to the net amount of carbon absorbed by all U s. forests in a year.
Besides understanding how forests affect carbon cycling the new technique could also play a vital role in understanding how climate change will affect forests.
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