From the Carnegie Institution Climate change and the soil
Climate warming may not drive net losses of soil carbon from tropical forests
Washington, DC — The planet’s soil releases about 60 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, which is far more than that released by burning fossil fuels. This happens through a process called soil respiration. This enormous release of carbon is balanced by carbon coming into the soil system from falling leaves and other plant matter, as well as by the underground activities of plant roots.
Short-term warming studies have documented that rising temperatures increase the rate of soil respiration. As a result, scientists have worried that global warming would accelerate the decomposition of carbon in the soil, and decrease the amount of carbon stored there. If true, this would release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it would accelerate global warming.
New work by a team of scientists including Carnegie’s Greg Asner and Christian Giardina of the U.S. Forest Service used an expansive whole-ecosystem study, the first of its kind, on tropical montane wet forests in Hawaii to sort through the many processes that control soil carbon stocks with changing temperature. Their work is published in Nature Climate Change.
The team revealed that higher temperatures increased the amount of leaf litter falling onto the soil, as well as other underground sources of carbon such as roots. Surprisingly, long-term warming had little effect on the overall storage of carbon in the tropical forest soil or the rate at which that carbon is processed into carbon dioxide.
“If these findings hold true in other tropical regions, then warmer temperatures may not necessarily cause tropical soils to release their carbon to the atmosphere at a faster rate,” remarked Asner. “On the other hand, we cannot expect that the soil will soak up more carbon in places where vegetation is stimulated by warmer temperatures. Unlike tropical trees, the soil seems to be on the sidelines in the climate adaptation game.”
This means the observed increase in the rate of soil respiration accompanying rising temperatures is due to carbon dioxide released by the an uptick in the amount of litter falling on the forest floor and an increase in carbon from underground sources. It is not from a decrease in the overall amount of carbon stored in the soil.
Giardina noted “While we found that carbon stored in the mineral soil was insensitive to long-term warming, the loss of unprotected carbon responded strongly to temperature. This tells us that the sensitivity of each source of soil respiration needs to be quantified, and the aggregate response examined, before an understanding of ecosystem carbon balance in a warmer world can be achieved.”
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the USDA Forest Service, and the Carnegie Institution for Science.
Translation – we need more $$$
Some persons call themselves scholars but act as if they were money collectors…..
Still wasting time looking in the wrong place. Wow these guys are persistent.
What part of the word “ocean” do they not understand?
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore
A runaway ‘treehouse’ effect
The EU has argued for a Directive to increase the carbon content of soils – Directive 2004/35/EC. Official Journal of the European Union – in part as a means of sequestering carbon but mainly as an objective means of improving soil structure to increase the permeability so improving the capture of rainfall and reduce soil erosion from run off. This good proposal was withdrawn in 2014 largely following objections from the farming community that it would involve too much bureacracy and that farmers already take good care of soils – not true in a substantial number of cases as soil carbon levels have reached low values in many areas and much of the flooding in the EU results from low soil permeability that increases river flow rates.
That on one side, the net effect of increasing soil carbon would be to increase evaporative cooling, so decreasing maximum temperatures but also increasing minimum temperatures from the increased heat capacity with the net effect for crops and man being positive from improved crop growth.
In the Uncertainty of funding… My wife is a manager of managers at a major University, she manages the operations side of 5 departments. Her budgets are shrinking for Climate Research and have since before she was hired. When hired she had three offices assigned to her. One of those offices had a $3000 ergonomic desk in it. She moves between her buildings each day, so office work space isn’t as big of an issue as it is for some.
She gave up that ergo desk for an employee who needed it today, because two of her departments budgets could not squeeze out a penny for her, to have any replacement costs. Context at a school, with about 10,000 employees of one form or another, she manages about 7% of the school workforce.
As stated, she has three offices down from 4 when her prior held the job, and she found a free replacement, point is she knows her own budgets, and couldn’t afford a desk from two of them. Its squeaking that tight now.
Ironically, the economist are the best funded with surplus… go figure.
Peter Azlac says “… much of the flooding in the EU results from low soil permeability that increases river flow rates.”
How about some references for such a statement!
“If true, this would release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it would accelerate global warming.”
Where is the evidence? Carbon dioxide increase lags behind increasing temperature…
(http://www.co2science.org/articles/V2/N7/EDIT.php)
Gee, after observing that the planetary climate remained stable within a few degrees over billions of years, scientists have made the startling discovery that the system is self regulating. Better break out the outstanding achievement medals.
Well, gosh and golly! Some while back while Brian Cox’s nature/science documentaries were still showing on BBC TV, he showed on a meter that CO2 in a rain forest changed more over 24 hours than the annual global level. Have not seen another program since by Brian Cox. I wonder why? /sarc?
Why do these people talk a bout “carbon” when they mean “carbon dioxide”? Thet are radically different things. Are they so scientifically illiterate they cannot accurately describe the compound they are measuring?
Richard111, I can assure you that Brian Cox is a dyed-in-the-wall believer in man-made climate change. He has stated so.
Dr. Paul Mackey. I couldn’t agree more. It’s lazy, apart from being totally inaccurate. Carbon is carbon. Carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide.
Damn auto-correct! Should be ‘Dyed-in-the-wool’.
hopefully, i’ll be allowed to post a little humour from The Onion:
23 July: The Onion: Report: Climate Change Skeptics Could Reach Catastrophic Levels By 2020
WASHINGTON—In a worrying development that could have dire implications for the health of the planet, a report published Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the number of climate change skeptics could reach catastrophic levels by the year 2020.
According to the agency’s findings, the rising quantity and concentration of individuals who willfully deny or downplay the ruinous impact of the ongoing climate crisis will no longer be manageable by the end of the decade, leading to disastrous consequences for global ecosystems that may well prove irreversible…
“In recent decades, we have observed an alarming increase in people who refuse to acknowledge the reality of global warming, which has exceeded even our worst-case projections,” said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, confirming a worldwide spike in the number of deniers who are actively seeking to discredit the scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for climate change. “If this trend continues at its current rate, we will pass a critical threshold of unfounded skepticism within the next six years that will have devastating repercussions on every continent and in every ocean, threatening the entire global population.”….READ ON….
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-climate-change-skeptics-could-reach-catastr,36521/
peter azlac says:
July 23, 2014 at 11:17 pm
But the IPCC already says minimum temperatures are rising. It’s already better than we thought.
“carbon stored in the soil”
Like coal? Soot? Graphite? Diamonds?
“The team revealed that higher temperatures increased the amount of leaf litter falling onto the soil, as well as other underground sources of carbon such as roots.”
This sentence doesn’t make sense to me – I thought trees had only a fixed amount of leaves each year regardless of the temperature. And what are they saying in the last part of the sentence?
Thank you Pat.
I just could not stop laughing, marvelous
Notice how there is a team of on-site, on the ground researchers when it comes to studying the soil in Hawaii, but when it comes to studying the Arctic or Antarctic, it’s usually models and models and more models.
If they need help counting leaves in Hawaii, I’m available.
Exactly what increase in temperature was this soil respiration responding to?
houston really does have a problem http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2014/07/new-paper-unexpectedly-finds-diverging.html
there goes trenberth,s missing heat,back to space .
Have these folks read Montgomery’s ‘Dirt’ book, I don’t think so somehow.
There are questions I ask people if ever I get into a craic about ‘weather’, ‘climate’ etc, the folks I’m related to, live among, my friends and neighbours. Mostly farming types.
Q1= My house was built in a (cow pasture) field in 1960 and a hedge was planted around it to keep the cows out of the garden. My question is.. when I stand next to the hedge in the garden, the hedge is 6 feet tall. If I go into the field and stand beside the hedge, at the same length along it, the hedge is 8 feet tall.
Why?
Q2= about 125 years ago, the guy who owned my farmland at the time, made a small fortune from quarrying clay and making bricks, roof tiles etc, and especially field drainage tiles. And sure enough, he spent a shed load of money and a not inconsiderable number of tiles ‘draining’ and improving the land. I obviously now am tasked with maintaining that underground drainage system.
Whenever I do investigate faults that occur, floods, wet patches etc, I find the tiles are buried under 2, 3 or sometimes even 4 feet of pure, solid red clay. With added cobbles rocks and small boulders. Nightmare stuff to work with even with a backhoe loader let alone using a spade or shovel.
My question is why, why was so much manual labour, time and materials spent burying these field drainage tiles under an impervious layer of clay. Apart from being almost impossible stuff to dig by hand, the drainage system had not a snowball’s chance in he11 of actually working as it was supposed to.
Q3= I simply ask them how nitrogen fertiliser works, what does it do, how does it *actually* make stuff grow. What goes on there?
Q4= Concerning the single track no-through-road asphalt roadway that comes to my farmstead. Why does it appear to have been built up above the level of the surrounding fields in some place, but not others. Why is it, for the most part, 18 inches to 2 feet above the level of the fields.
Invariably when I ask these questions, folks shrug their shoulders, suggest that that is always how its been and change the subject….
Alex says:
July 23, 2014 at 11:14 pm
A runaway ‘treehouse’ effect
Don’t worry a lot of us are cutting down trees as fast as we can.