From the University of Virginia, comes yet another incomplete press release that doesn’t give the name of the paper or the DOI:
Salt marsh carbon may play role in slowing climate warming, study shows
A warming climate and rising seas will enable salt marshes to more rapidly capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly playing a role in slowing the rate of climate change, according to a new study led by a University of Virginia environmental scientist and published in the Sept. 27 issue of the journal Nature.
Carbon dioxide is the predominant so-called “greenhouse gas” that acts as sort of an atmospheric blanket, trapping the Earth’s heat. Over time, an abundance of carbon dioxide can change the global climate, according to generally accepted scientific theory. A warmer climate melts polar ice, causing sea levels to rise.
A large portion of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is produced by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels to energize a rapidly growing world human population.
“We predict that marshes will absorb some of that carbon dioxide, and if other coastal ecosystems – such as seagrasses and mangroves – respond similarly, there might be a little less warming,” said the study’s lead author, Matt Kirwan, a research assistant professor of environmental sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Salt marshes, made up primarily of grasses, are important coastal ecosystems, helping to protect shorelines from storms and providing habitat for a diverse range of wildlife, from birds to mammals, shell- and fin-fishes and mollusks. They also build up coastal elevations by trapping sediment during floods, and produce new soil from roots and decaying organic matter.
“One of the cool things about salt marshes is that they are perhaps the best example of an ecosystem that actually depends on carbon accumulation to survive climate change: The accumulation of roots in the soil builds their elevation, keeping the plants above the water,” Kirwan said.
Salt marshes store enormous quantities of carbon, essential to plant productivity, by, in essence, breathing in the atmospheric carbon and then using it to grow, flourish and increase the height of the soil. Even as the grasses die, the carbon remains trapped in the sediment. The researchers’ model predicts that under faster sea-level rise rates, salt marshes could bury up to four times as much carbon as they do now.
“Our work indicates that the value of these ecosystems in capturing atmospheric carbon might become much more important in the future, as the climate warms,” Kirwan said.
But the study also shows that marshes can survive only moderate rates of sea level rise. If seas rise too quickly, the marshes could not increase their elevations at a rate rapid enough to stay above the rising water. And if marshes were to be overcome by fast-rising seas, they no longer could provide the carbon storage capacity that otherwise would help slow climate warming and the resulting rising water.
“At fast levels of sea level rise, no realistic amount of carbon accumulation will help them survive,” Kirwan noted.
Kirwan and his co-author, Simon Mudd, a geosciences researcher at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, used computer models to predict salt marsh growth rates under different climate change and sea-level scenarios.
The United States Geological Survey’s Global Change Research Program supported the research.
Contact: Fariss Samarrai fls4f@virginia.edu (and tell him to make complete press releases please)
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After some searching, I found the paper and the abstract:
Response of salt-marsh carbon accumulation to climate change
Matthew L. Kirwan & Simon M. Mudd
- Nature 489, 550–553 (27 September 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11440
About half of annual marine carbon burial takes place in shallow water ecosystems where geomorphic and ecological stability is driven by interactions between the flow of water, vegetation growth and sediment transport1. Although the sensitivity of terrestrial and deep marine carbon pools to climate change has been studied for decades, there is little understanding of how coastal carbon accumulation rates will change and potentially feed back on climate2, 3. Here we develop a numerical model of salt marsh evolution, informed by recent measurements of productivity and decomposition, and demonstrate that competition between mineral sediment deposition and organic-matter accumulation determines the net impact of climate change on carbon accumulation in intertidal wetlands. We find that the direct impact of warming on soil carbon accumulation rates is more subtle than the impact of warming-driven sea level rise, although the impact of warming increases with increasing rates of sea level rise. Our simulations suggest that the net impact of climate change will be to increase carbon burial rates in the first half of the twenty-first century, but that carbon–climate feedbacks are likely to diminish over time.
The article says;
“A large proportion”?
Nature emits 34 molecules of carbon dioxide for each molecule of carbon dioxide emitted by all human activities.
Richard
It all reminds me of the Aristotlelian Science of epi-cycles where the failure of the theory to predict events was gradually modified with ever increasing complexity to keep up with reality. Rather than re-think the CAGW theory, counteractive mechanisms are added continuously to the model ib order to explain the failures. Eventually people notice that the theory is falling apart.
They discovered CO2 is good for plants? Wow.
Basically a win-win situation, except to stay on message (and continue the grant money flowing), they had to throw in a reference to a very fast sea level rise (how likely is this?) messing things up.
Carbon dioxide is the predominant so-called “greenhouse gas”
——-
Predominant????
There goes there credibility.
“But the study also shows that marshes can survive only moderate rates of sea level rise. ”
Good thing sea levels are only rising by a couple of millimeters a year
richardscourtney: “Nature emits 34 molecules of carbon dioxide for each molecule of carbon dioxide emitted by all human activities.”
But if we don’t do something now it could rise from 1 in 35 to 1 in 34. And then we’d all be doomed. As a purely selfish benefit do you have any links handy on this matter from sources that are acceptable to the climatology crowd?
The salt marsh in North Wales, immediately east of Portmadoc produces the finest lamb you can buy. Contrary to popular belief the meat is not naturally salty. The plants that grow there repel salt so the lambs that eat them have a naturally herby flavour. This salt marsh was deliberately created by William Maddocks and his hombres from Anglesey. Scientists were not involved at any point. Good job.
William S. Burroughs had a good quote about scientists but it is very rude.
“Carbon dioxide is the predominant so-called “greenhouse gas” that acts as sort of an atmospheric blanket, trapping the Earth’s heat. Over time, an abundance of carbon dioxide can change the global climate, according to generally accepted scientific theory. A warmer climate melts polar ice, causing sea levels to rise.
Gees.. count the errors !!!!!! and that’s just in one sentence !!!!!
roflmao !!!
well 3 sentences. one paragraph. I meant.
Seems like propaganda for teenagers, with words like “cool” and “Sort of” ,,,,,,,,,,Those are really precise terms. The best part was how the roots would grow and and keep the plants above water while the Sea level rises…..as if the water level never changes in marshes. It’s just drivel for the masses.
“research assistant professor of environmental sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences.”
When they start bundling Arts and Science, you KNOW they have a big problem !
Poor Uni.Virginia. Credibility takes yet ANOTHER major hit .
Concerning the method used for sequestration of carbon by salt marshes, the same could equally be said of peat bogs, huge areas of which are being gratuitously destroyed by the construction of wind farms and their associated facilities such as access roads, so not only are huge quantities of sequestered carbon being released into the environment, the capability of the bog to sequester future emissions will be heavily compromised too.
And yet as far as I can tell, this aspect of wind farm construction has not been considered worthy of even minor investigation.
What a surprise….
Non sequitur?
Seems to me I’ve heard somewhere that the South Pole has net growth in ice.
Seems to me somewhere I’ve heard that the North Pole is floating [sea] ice.
Where did I go wrong?
CO2 is NOT the “predominant” greenhouse gas. It’s the one that gets the most attention, and the one we pay the highest taxes on, but it’s not the one that is most prevalent in the atmosphere.
The usual mindless assumption of causation.
It occurs to me that we don’t actually know if the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is OUTGASSED FROM the ocean, as it did EVERY PREVIOUS TIME it increased.
Should be possible to determine this experimentally. I’d imagine something like a large airtight dome floating on the ocean, descending down far enough that its edge would never be exposed to the air by wave motion. This would naturally experience a moving ‘selection’ of water but no new atmosphere. Keep it in place for a year, measuring air and water temperature and complete chemical content of air inside and outside. After four seasons, you should have a pretty good idea of how much CO2 was added or subtracted to the initial air by the water underneath.
The problem is not just sea level, though we can expect roughly a meter by 2100. The authors (at least in this summary) did not quantify the amount of CO2 that would be sequestered by salt marshes. Forests are the main terrestrial carbon sinks, and they are in decline, from logging, fires, pests, and disruptive global warming. Salt marshes can’t do much to offset degraded sinks.
Mike Roddy says:
“The problem is not just sea level, though we can expect roughly a meter by 2100.”
That’s on your planet, Mike. Here on Earth we can expect several inches. Maybe even a foot.
Pepper and mint marches would go really well with the salt marches for raising lamb. Yummy!
I love eg Chiefios Carbon-is-Plant-Food stories, however the green stuff gives back all that it sequestered at end of life. To give wood a NET carbon sequestration effect, we need to cut down the trees and lacquer them before they decompose. Instead of buying carbon offsets in a forest where the natives use slash and burn, Gore needs to start storing piles of plastic- coated lumber behind his manse.
From the Abstract:
The first half goes without saying, but due to the higher atmospheric CO₂ levels causing increased plant growth thus increasing “carbon burial” as peat and tree trunks, and there’ll be more “buried” if the forest fires are kept controlled.
But the second half sounds like an echo from the “ocean acidification” doomsaying, Nature will absorb some of the excess CO₂, as it is currently absorbing about half of the total “excess anthropogenic” emissions. But at some point the absorption mechanism will get saturated, and then…!
As soon as I see “heat trapping” I know they’re clueless. You can’t trap heat. Energy that isn’t being transferred isn’t heat. Zero credibility.
Sarcasm says:
September 26, 2012 at 4:02 pm
“I love eg Chiefios Carbon-is-Plant-Food stories, however the green stuff gives back all that it sequestered at end of life.”
This expresses a logical error which gets repeated often. It is a dynamic reservoir. It stores carbon in proportion to the current size of that reservoir. If the size increases, so does the amount it is holding. The only way you are going to get zero net is if, after increasing in size, it decreases back to what it was before it increased.
I do not even have the energy to read this carp. The MSM is just a state propaganda organ, kow-towing to whatever statist idea is in vogue. Don’t forget that Warmistas are funded by the state, indirectly and directly; and the Warmistas’ organisations are directing their energy at state policy.
It’s called a gravy train.
At the start of the Holocene, our present pleasant interglacial which began 20,000 years ago, sea levels were 440 ft below current level. Therefore, in the last 20,000 years, oceans were able to rise 439 ft WITHOUT ANY HUMAN ASSISTANCE. Surprising to the A & S clowns at UV, salt marshes were able to ‘relocate’ with sudden rises of as much as 50 ft in one year. This ‘report’ is a juvenile effort to get on, or stay on, the AGW gravey train. An atmospheric CO2 molecule cannot capture, store or redirect outgoing radiation, it merely vibrates for a billionth of a second as the photon passes on it’s way to outer space. Consider ‘sequestration’ for what it is….vegetation struggling to provide a base for the food chain. Stop with the GHE drama and be greatful for this wonderous, self balancing world….that GROWS on CO2.
Since I was brought up:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/got-wood/
As the amount of CO2 in the air over a given area is very little in mass, a standing forest consumes more than ALL CO2 overhead. Bamboo is even faster.
I have a series of pictures in the posting of a 1 foot square tile with a chunk of plant stuff on top of it that holds the equivalent of ALL CO2 above the tile to the top of the air. Like this one:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/oakdsc_6048.jpg
Notice that the citrus tree trunk behind it has much more wood per square foot….
The necessary conclusion is that forests will rapidly deplete excess CO2 down to the level where plants have trouble growing at full rate. That adding CO2 causes rapid increases in plant growth confirms we were in that state prior to our recent production of it to excess (and chopping down giant swaths of forest globally…)