Climate impacts in northern forests
Northern forests hold around 54% of the world’s total terrestrial carbon stock and contribute more than one-third to our global terrestrial carbon sink. This report reviews the impact of human induced
Carbon Sinks
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Mangrove production and carbon sinks: A revision of global budget estimates
<p>Mangrove forests are highly productive but globally threatened coastal ecosystems, whose role in the carbon budget of the coastal zone has long been debated. Here we provide a comprehensive synthesis
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The changing Amazon forest
Long-term monitoring of distributed, multiple plots is the key to quantify macroecological patterns and changes. Here we examine the evidence for concerted changes in the structure, dynamics and composition of old-growth Amazonian forests in the late twentieth century. In the 1980s and 1990s, mature forests gained biomass and underwent accelerated growth and dynamics, all consistent with a widespread, long-acting stimulation of growth. Because growth on average exceeded mortality, intact Amazonian forests have been a carbon sink.
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To stop your CO2 emission, bury it
Millions Of Tonnes Buried By Norwegian Platform Sleipner Platform: With planet Earth engaged in a heated race against global warming, "carbon capture and storage' (CCS) has brought a ray of hope, and a Norwegian gas platform is leading the way. The Sleipner platform in the North Sea, a mammoth steel and cement structure, has successfully buried millions of tonnes of CO2 under the seabed for the past 12 years in a pioneering project.
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Variations in type of vegetal cover and heterogeneity of soil organic carbon in affecting sink capacity of tropical soils
The present study aims at assessing the influence of different vegetal covers, changes in landuse pattern and heterogeneity of physical fractions of the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool on soil carbon. A tropical sanctuary area with some anthropogenic activities was taken as the study area.
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Fire-derived charcoal causes loss of forest humus
Boreal forests serve as important global sources or sinks of carbon (C) and wildfire is a major driver of C storage in these forests. Although fire releases CO2 to the atmosphere, it also converts plant biomass into forms of black carbon, such as charcoal, that are resistant to microbial attack and persist in the soil for thousands of years. It has frequently been suggested that, because of its resistance, black C can serve as an important long-term C sink that may help offset the release of human-induced CO2 to the atmosphere.
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Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change
The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) is a native insect of the pine forests of western North America, and its populations periodically erupt into large-scale outbreaks. During outbreaks, the resulting widespread tree mortality reduces forest carbon uptake and increases future emissions from the decay of killed trees.
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Exxon airs doubts on Bass Strait carbon plan
EXXON Mobil has raised fresh concerns over Federal Government plans to establish a world-first regulated carbon capture and storage system in Australia. The oil giant operates the Bass Strait oil and gas fields, which have been targeted as eventual homes for the storage of greenhouse gases from the planned $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley, a joint venture between Shell and Anglo American.
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Research to trap carbon in soil
A potential new weapon in the battle against global warming - to remove carbon from the atmosphere by locking it up permanently in soil minerals - is being developed at Newcastle University in the UK. When plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, they use some of the carbon to grow. But most is pumped through the roots into the earth around them and then escapes back into the atmosphere or groundwater.
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Potential role of bamboo plantations in afforestation/reforestation CDM
Global warming is one of the most devastating problems of the new millennium. The Kyoto Protocol is the first step towards an international strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions which in turn helps to mitigate the global climate change. A decision was made in Marrakech Conference of Parties (2001), to include the afforestation and reforestation as the only eligible activities of the CDM.
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Chemical environment and nutrient fluxes in a flood plain wetland ecosystem, Kashmir Himalayas, India
Research findings are presented on the chemical environment and nutrient dynamics in Hokersar wetland ecosystem of Kashmir Himalayas (J&K). The water body is characterised by calcium-rich water and dominance of bicarbonate anion. The estimation of nutrient pools in principal components (water, sediments and macrophytes) indicates sediments as long-term major sink (>99%); the sequence being sediment>water>macrophytes.