From the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Increased tropical forest growth could release carbon from the soil
A new study shows that as climate change enhances tree growth in tropical forests, the resulting increase in litterfall could stimulate soil micro-organisms leading to a release of stored soil carbon.
The research was led by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Cambridge, UK. The results are published online today (14 August 2011) in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
The researchers used results from a six-year experiment in a rainforest at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Central America, to study how increases in litterfall – dead plant material such as leaves, bark and twigs which fall to the ground – might affect carbon storage in the soil. Their results show that extra litterfall triggers an effect called ‘priming’ where fresh carbon from plant litter provides much-needed energy to micro-organisms, which then stimulates the decomposition of carbon stored in the soil.
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  IMAGE: Measuring CO2 efflux from the soil in subplots where the forest floor has been replaced with litter with a distinct isotopic signature. A wire mesh tent excludes forest litter from…
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Lead author Dr Emma Sayer from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said, “Most estimates of the carbon sequestration capacity of tropical forests are based on measurements of tree growth. Our study demonstrates that interactions between plants and soil can have a massive impact on carbon cycling. Models of climate change must take these feedbacks into account to predict future atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.”
The study concludes that a large proportion of the carbon sequestered by greater tree growth in tropical forests could be lost from the soil. The researchers estimate that a 30% increase in litterfall could release about 0.6 tonnes of carbon per hectare from lowland tropical forest soils each year. This amount of carbon is greater than estimates of the climate-induced increase in forest biomass carbon in Amazonia over recent decades. Given the vast land surface area covered by tropical forests and the large amount of carbon stored in the soil, this could affect the global carbon balance.
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 IMAGE: This is leaf litter around the buttress roots of a tropical tree at the study site in Panama.
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Tropical forests play an essential role in regulating the global carbon balance. Human activities have caused carbon dioxide levels to rise but it was thought that trees would respond to this by increasing their growth and taking up larger amounts of carbon. However, enhanced tree growth leads to more dead plant matter, especially leaf litter, returning to the forest floor and it is unclear what effect this has on the carbon cycle.
Dr Sayer added, “Soils are thought to be a long-term store for carbon but we have shown that these stores could be diminished if elevated carbon dioxide levels and nitrogen deposition boost plant growth.”
Co-author Dr Edmund Tanner, from the University of Cambridge, said, “This priming effect essentially means that older, relatively stable soil carbon is being replaced by fresh carbon from dead plant matter, which is easily decomposed. We still don’t know what consequences this will have for carbon cycling in the long term.”
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@Bromley the Kurd: It will only shut up and go away when the money goes away. In some countries that seems to be happening already, but not in the US.
This graph is an eye-opener. Note that “Republican” Bush raised funding, then “Democrat” Obama raised it again, but the 2009 Cornucopia For Bankers And Corporate Welfare Queens is the biggest chunk of all. A real hockey-stick.
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/blog27/funding-graph.jpg
Graph is clipped from this PDF document:
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11224&type=1
After careful reflection of the implications of all this and a deep prognostic contemplation I feel that the only reasonable response to this is…………………….HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA………………phew….that’s better…..going for a drive in my beautiful 6litre V8 now…..runs on 85% ethanol so no worries…
Geoff Sherrington says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:40 am
Any competent geochemist will tell you that organic carbon does not accumulate in soils with time.
I thought this was different in boreal forests – they’ve been slowly accumulating organic soil since the last glaciation and still do.
This is classic! Forests obviously take in CO2 as they grow, and then release some of it as dead and discarded plant material decays. The only question is: How much more CO2 is sequestered than released?
Six years of study, and the authors have no clue.
A complete waste of time and research money.
Climate science at its best.
Are Humans the problem? or is it just the less equal humans who do not understand the threat?
Hmm, the models will need fixing – time to start modelling leaves, soil and decomposition… get the research grants in….
Just goes to prove to me that under a complex system is always more complexity. Keep digging..
So this is what science has degenerated into? Pseudo science mumbo jumbo, half assed and half baked and half understood with the author of this putrid garbage placing the essential begging request at the end. This I suppose is the end result of two decades of massive funding from centralised funding bodies pouring monies into any group involved with the CAGW fraud and I call it a fraud because that is essentially what it is.
lol, oh my…….so, they would lead us to believe more trees means more CO2…… …. I’m not sure they have the basics of the concept of “carbon based life forms” down just yet.
There’s plenty more to say about this waste of time, space and energy, but I’ll just point out that this too is peer reviewed and written by our experts. —– with doctorates and everything….. 😐
Weren’t there a few studies that showed that increased CO2 would stunt the growth of trees?
Apparently the CAGW bunch have decided that there was no way to support that bit of nonsense, so they’ve moved on to calling bigger, healthier trees a threat to the rest of us. The good news is that my chainsaw is now “carbon neutral”.
In the heart of the Amazonian jungle, there are nearly no nutrients remaining in the soil compared with, say, healthy grasslands – it is all in the tree trunks and canopy. Trees such as the Jacaranda, which is native to that area, pump huge amounts of water out of the ground pulling up any available nutrients then drop quite a lot of water onto the ground over their roots with what appear to be digesting enzymes and sugars (which feed rock-digesting bacteria, see the work of Dr AD Karve) in them. Don’t park your car under one. This helps the Jacaranda gain more benefit than its neighbour from the available resource.
The paper shows that as the forest grows (in a tropical setting) the carbon gradually shifts above the ground by natural processes. When ‘fully developed’ there is less carbon in the ground than before and a lot more in the living biomass above it.
A similar process will take place when the permafrost melts. There is very little growing above the ground now and lots of carbon below the ground deposited the last time it was warm. The ratio of above:below will evolve.
There is no doubt that in both cases the net effect will be to have more total carbon in the living system, which carbon is pulled from the air.
Am I paranoid or does anyone else on WUWT think that there is an orchestration of scientific “research” to promote the concept of AGW and very little, if any research is independent? There are a couple of reasons for my thoughts on this:
1) What warped train of thought would lead a team to pump isotopes of carbon into the ground and measure the amount of CO2 released?
2) There are absolutely no research results stating that AGW is not occurring. Statistically there must be, therefore those results have not been published.
3) All research must be peer reviewed, the peers involved in AGW are more like a clique than peers.
I have said several times that the AGW bandwagon is like the tobacco crusade, once the smoking ban was in place in UK the number of papers published finding more health problems linked to tobacco has dropped substantially. The other similarity is that as time goes on the claims of each crusade get more and more outlandish ( I was told in all seriousness by a health professional, that if I picked my baby son up within in hour of smoking a cigarette, the nicotine in my breath could cause cot death. I am pleased to report that I gave up when he was 12 and he is a healthy 16 year old now).
After tobacco came alcohol, in UK we have endless “experts” telling us that the death toll will reach biblical proportions unless everyone stops drinking.
So my next question is that after we are all reduced to living in feudal economies, with no power when the wind stops blowing and no means of transport, what is the next global calamity heading our way that needs billions spent in research to avert it.
It is clear that this study shows that they can’t see the wood for the trees?
Hopefully when the error of their ways is pointed out they will turn over a new leaf:-)
Uh-oh, this could negatively impact the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) carbon
scamprogram.Further carbon “studies” will be necessary to correct this. Balancing the needs of both the carbon “scientists” and the countries who might be beneficiaries of “carbon science” can be difficult.
So what this means is that the entire Carbon Cycle “theory” is far from fact!
http://www.nofreewind.com/2009/06/man-made-and-natural-co2-in-atmosphere.html
At least you did not question their beleaf system, Stacey…
well…..you can’t argue with it
might, could, can, if…….
and the take home…..
“We still don’t know what consequences this will have for carbon cycling in the long term.”
…..but they met their requirements, and published
“…… it is unclear what effect this has on the carbon cycle”
“Models of climate change must take these feedbacks into account to predict future atmospheric carbon dioxide levels”
So how do the modellers build in these “unclear” effects or feedbacks?
I could do with a nice break somewhere warm and relaxingI’m thinking of conducting research into the impact of anthroprogenic climate change on the size of sand grains on tropical beaches. Obviously this would take a few months of intensive study at a number of different locations, and would be just as beneficial to the sum of human knowledge and welfare as this nonsense.Then obviously, forrests can’t possibly be added to the books as a “carbon sink.”
I wonder if Brazil knows.
And why, exactly, does anyone really care about “the global carbon balance”? Thousands more dollars flushed down the toilet for no reason.
To make perfect sense of all this vacuous, vacillating nonsense, just remember that the whole green enterprise is just a vast, worldwide job creation scheme for second-rate scientists .
Just think of your tax contribution to it as charity for the otherwise unemployable.
Does that make you feel better?
No – me neither.
So what happens in the forests from say 30° away from the equator. I know here in Colorado, trees that burned to a stump 100-150 years ago are still sitting there, as well as a lot of charcoal, sequestering a lot of CO2. This implies a great deal of forest area has it’s litter simply build up for a long time with minimal decay.
Who knew that Joni Mitchel would prove to be a prophet….
“Pave Paradise — Put up a Parking Lot”…. and so ye shall save the Earth.
Wonderful. Now I should buy shares in logging and paving companies. I am going to get rich while saving the environment. (I plan to buy a home next to Al Gore …with all the prophets… er profits.)
http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=208
Wow the desperation because of cooling has a last-chance fervor. They apparently have had no compuction about discarding the 1st law of thermodynamics and now they are taking a run at the law of conservation of mass. Mass balance good doctors, mass balance!
Since CO2 is heavier than nitrogen and oxygen, and the leaf litter and other organic cast offs from the trees are emitting so much CO2, and there is really little air movement in the tropical rainforests to dissipate the CO2, aren’t these “scientists” afraid they may be suffocated by the CO2? You would at least think the smaller ground dwelling insects, reptiles and mammals would be suffocating. (I’m being sarcastic here.)