This phenomenon is known as carbon fertilization (Picture: Pexels)
Human-caused climate change will most likely turn trees into gluttons, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. The study found that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased the wood mass – or biomass – of forests in the United States.
However, the study also clarifies that other factors such as climate and pests can also affect a tree’s mass. The study found that persistently high carbon levels led to an increase in the volume of wood in 10 different groups of temperate forests across the country. This shows that trees are helping to protect the Earth’s ecosystem from the effects of global warming through their rapid growth.
“Forests are taking carbon out of the atmosphere at a rate of about 13 percent of their total emissions,” said Brent Sohngen, study co-author and professor of environmental and resource economics at Ohio State University. me.” Mr Sohngen added, “While we are putting billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are actually removing most of it just by letting our forests grow.”
This phenomenon is called carbon fertilization: A stream of carbon dioxide accelerates plant photosynthesis, combining energy from the sun, water, and nutrients from the ground and air to create fuel. for life and promote plant growth, ANI reported.
“It’s well known that when you put a ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it doesn’t stay there forever,” says Sohngen. “A great deal of it ends up in the ocean, while the rest is taken over by trees, wetlands and those kinds of areas.”
Over the past two decades, forests in the United States have sequestered about 700-800 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, which, according to the study, accounts for about 10% to 11% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions. While exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide can have adverse effects on natural systems and infrastructure, trees have no problem with providing the Earth with additional greenhouse gases.
If you imagine a tree as just a giant cylinder, says Sohngen, the additional mass the study found is essentially equivalent to an extra tree ring. While such growth may not be noticeable to the average person, compared to the trees of 30 years ago, modern vegetation is about 20% to 30% larger than before. If applied to the forests of Coast Redwood – home to some of the largest trees in the world – even a modest percentage increase means additional carbon stocks in the forest. The researchers also found that even large old trees continue to add biomass as they age due to elevated carbon dioxide levels.
Unlike the effects of climate change, which vary by location and time, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere mixes roughly evenly, so there’s roughly the same amount everywhere on Earth, Sohngen said. .
Overall, Sohngen said, this work shows that the response of wood masses to carbon dioxide in our ecosystem is even higher than his colleagues had predicted with experimental studies.
Sohngen says that carbon fertilization could one day make tree-planting efforts more productive. For example, if it costs $50 to plant an acre of a tree today, with the help of carbon fertilizers, that number could easily drop to $40. Because climate change costs the United States about $2 trillion dollars a year, that drop could help reduce the cost of mitigating climate change, Sohngen said.
“Carbon fertilization definitely makes it cheaper to plant trees, avoid deforestation, or do other activities related to trying to increase the amount of carbon sinks in forests,” says Sohngen. “We should plant more trees and preserve the older ones because they are probably the best way to mitigate climate change.”
