26-Year Study Indicates that Warming Soil Poses Carbon Risk to Planet

[jpak]

https://www.capecod.com/newscenter/26-year-study-indicates-that-warming-soil-poses-carbon-risk-to-planet/

WOODS HOLE – After 26 years, the world’s longest-running experiment to discover how warming temperatures affect forest soils has revealed a surprising result: Soil warming stimulates periods of abundant carbon release from the soil to the atmosphere alternating with periods of no detectable loss in soil carbon stores.

The study has led by researcher from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Chicago and suggests that in a warming world, a self-reinforcing and perhaps uncontrollable carbon feedback will occur between forest soils and the climate system, adding to the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The experiment began in 1991 in a deciduous forest stand at the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. Researchers buried electrical cables in a set of plots and heated the soil 5° C above what it had been.

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[BigmanPigman]

1. I would love to have a window to see what Earth will be like

in 50 and 100 years. I am curious to see which information, studies and theories that scientists are making today is correct and what is miscalculated or is going unnoticed.

[NickB79]

2. I figure I have 50 years left

Most of my ancestors lived into their 80's and 90's; we have almost no cases of chronic disease or cancer in our family tree, and I'm in really good health as I approach 40.

I figure I'll fight to hang on just to see if I was right.