From CSIRO and “increased CO2 has benefits” department:
![High_Resolution[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/high_resolution1.png?quality=75)
In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.
“In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
This, along with the vast extents of arid landscapes, means Australia featured prominently in our results.”
“While a CO2 effect on foliage response has long been speculated, until now it has been difficult to demonstrate,” according to Dr Donohue.
“Our work was able to tease-out the CO2 fertilisation effect by using mathematical modelling together with satellite data adjusted to take out the observed effects of other influences such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.”
The fertilisation effect occurs where elevated CO2 enables a leaf during photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar, to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air, or both.
If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants in arid environments will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves. These changes in leaf cover can be detected by satellite, particularly in deserts and savannas where the cover is less complete than in wet locations, according to Dr Donohue.
“On the face of it, elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist forestry and agriculture in such areas; however there will be secondary effects that are likely to influence water availability, the carbon cycle, fire regimes and biodiversity, for example,” Dr Donohue said.
“Ongoing research is required if we are to fully comprehend the potential extent and severity of such secondary effects.”
This study was published in the US Geophysical Research Letters journal and was funded by CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Australian Research Council and Land & Water Australia.
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In fact all zones have had a measurable increase in biomass. Which will often be followed by an increase in atmospheric moisture. These are good things.
That looks like rather good news! Are any of their results disputed?
I would be very interested to hear the comment from the Climate Science Establishment.
Kurt in Switzerland
We will but only after they quit gnashing their teeth sweep up the hair that is suddenly all over the floor.
Interesting. I would think such an effect would also be somewhat cumulative e.g. those greened deserts may be capable of absorbing more CO2 over the near future as the plant density increases, thereby increasing natural carbon sinks.
Do we get the same CO2 readings from all over the globe?
Old news, but it needs to be repeated often.
Increased desert greening! A ruination of a natural environment!!
Won’t someone think of the lesser spotter sand lizards!!
Has anyone also tied in changes in precipitation to this increase in foliage? I would think that as the foliage increases the shadowing effect might reduce soil evaporation. I just don’t know whether the increased moisture lost by the foliage itself would be greater than that saved in the soil.
Vegetation cools the atmosphere both directly through transpiration and through increased cloud cover. And as Ashby pointed out, vegetation is also a CO2 sink.
So the question is how much does this counteract CO2 greenhouse warming. A little? A lot?
So an small increase in a trace gas can affect the vegitation – but the same increase can absolutely not have affect the climate!!.
Very strange, truly a magical gas.
SergiMK I think you will find that most of the people here agree that CO2 has some effect on the atmosphere it is the Catastrophic part we don’t agree with
sergeiMK,
Yes, that is true. You can see that at current concentrations, CO2 has no measurable effect on global temperature.
But it does have a measurable effect on plant life.
SergeiMK, few would deny that CO2 affects the climate, just that it won’t lead to any dramatic or potentially catastrophic warming.
“We’ll all be rooned”
An increase in vegetation will lead to an increase in bushfires, which will lead to more CO2, which will lead to more vegetation, which will……….oh dear
@Patrick Guinness – But if the atmospheric moisture is increased by the increase in vegetation, then you’ve found the link between CO2 and increased water vapor, THE main GHG, and we’re all doomed! It’s worse than I thought!
Sarc off/
Precipitation in desert areas is by definition scant to begin with. Locations within parts of the Atacama in Chile have never had measurable precipitation in recorded history. One point that is past over rather quickly is that photosynthesis fixes carbon dioxide by bonding it with water yielding carbohydrates. In desert regions, that water has to be available before the plants can use it. However, plant respiration often reverses at night resulting in nocturnal increases in CO2 and water vapor. Deep rooted pants will pull water from below the reach of others and then release during respiration. The darker foliage acts to precipitate dew (think Dune, the novel, not the film), so increased foliage can increase the surface availability of water. The spikey nature of many desert plants is ideal for precipitating dew and directing the droplets back to the plant’s trunk or main stem, or to the ground directly above the roots. The growth bounding limit is reached when the community demand for water balances available moisture, and the deeper rooted plants begin to compete for ground water, drawing down the elevation of ground water beyond reach of the deeper root systems..
This happens in forests as well as deserts and can be the direct result of fire suppression. A forester from the Deschutes N.F. in Oregon explained this, remarking that the beetles, while a problem, were really a symptom of the intense competition for water, which weakened trees. He concluded at the time that there were two or three times as many trees in the forest (in the 1990s) as the 19th century historical record indicated, and that fire suppression was the direct cause of the overpopulation that drew the beetle problems and directly caused the “drought” that was killing trees.
Looking at the very high intensity greening around the southern portion of the Sahara – does this mean that particular desert is shrinking? If so will the definition of desert (which I have normally heard in terms of inches of rainfall per year) need to change?
Rain is not needed to green an area. There are areas in the Hawaiian Islands that never receive rainfall yet they are covered with green grass and even support livestock. The grass receives much of its H20 from the dew that settles on it after the sun sets.
So get out there and remind your Prius-driving neighbor that they’re contributing to desertification.
A bumper-sticker for SUVs: “I’m doing more to feed Africa than Bono ever did”
I guess they left out the Sahara and most of North Africa because a rise from zero to a positive number would be a bit inconvenient for their percentage scale?
Look at the southern border of the Sahara – percentage increase at the top of the range, in other words – the drier and more arid a landscape was in 1982 the bigger the percentage increase. grey = infinity?
Which came first, the temperature or the CO2?
Dirk,
The sections that are grey are still plantless. Check them out on google maps. Moving from 0% coverage to 0% coverage is technically an infinite gain. However, it is also an infinite loss as well. I think leaving it grey is appropriate.
Carbon dioxide is the basis of all life (on Earth, anyway). CO2 and H20 are almost all that we are made of (with some, N,P, S and minerals thrown in here and there).
To get the CO2 from the air, plants have little openings on the undersides of their leaves, called stomata, the Greek word for mouths. The wider they are open, the more CO2 they get–and the more water vapor they lose. Thus, the increase in CO2 has had a water-sparing effect and our deserts are greening.
This is a good time to tell you all about a major crop science breakthrough called Sonic Bloom (R). A combination of specific sound frequencies and foliar feeding produces a large increase in plant growth, with a boost in nutrient values as well. It is organic, for those interested in that.
Research shows that this method of crop nutrition causes big changes to the stomata. They become larger and more detailed. The plants become much more drought tolerant, so much so that many farmers have had the biggest crop of their lives while drought killed their neighbors crops.
You can learn more and purchase your own test kit from http://www.originalsonicbloom.com This is a delightful website, full of colorful pictures and interesting stories. Disclosure: I do not get anything whatsoever from promoting Sonic Bloom(R) except the satisfaction of increasing life on Earth, which is my Life Purpose.