Could plants help tame the greenhouse
It's easy to see how climate change might affect the globe's vegetation, driving hardwood forests into regions now covered with evergreens and causing deserts to shift. It's less easy to picture the other side of the coin: biology's impact on the atmosphere. So mathematician Berrien Moore III of the University of New Hampshire, who heads the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program task force on global analysis, interpretation, and modeling, staged a simple demonstration. He modeled the effects of a biosphere fertilized by increased CO[sub 2] - and found that it could first help, then hinder, human efforts to slow the buildup of greenhouse gases. To simulate such a biotic carbon sink, Moore combined a simple model of CO[sub 2] uptake by the ocean with an equally simple model of its uptake by photosynthesis on land and its release by deforestation and plant decay. He then forced this simple ocean-atmosphere-vegetation model with fossil fuel CO[sub 2] emissions from 1860 to the present. As expected, his model ended up with too much carbon in the atmosphere. So he turned up photosynthesis, fertilizing plant growth in his model, until the rate of CO[sub 2] buildup just matched the observed increase. Moore then explored how this terrestrial carbon sink would respond if the CO[sub 2] buildup slowed. The result: If you were to cap the rate of CO[sub 2] emissions from fossil fuel burning, [this terrestrial] sink would reduce the atmospheric lifetime of CO[sub 2] by a factor of four or five. This cleansing effect would operate on timescales of years or decades, compared with centuries for the ocean, says Moore - fast enough to aid human efforts to slow the CO[sub 2] buildup. However, it doesn't do it forever. If at some point emissions cuts and the terrestrial sink succeeded in reducing atmospheric CO[sub 2], plant growth would drop and CO[sub 2] levels would bounce back up as all the extra biomass rotted away.
- OSTI ID:
- 6506748
- Journal Information:
- Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States), Vol. 259:5102; ISSN 0036-8075
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
CARBON CYCLE
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
CLIMATIC CHANGE
PLANT GROWTH
AIR-BIOSPHERE INTERACTIONS
BIOLOGICAL MODELS
CARBON DIOXIDE
CLIMATE MODELS
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
ECOSYSTEMS
PLANTS
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON OXIDES
CHALCOGENIDES
GROWTH
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
540110*
540210 - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (1990-)
540310 - Environment
Aquatic- Basic Studies- (1990-)
290301 - Energy Planning & Policy- Environment
Health
& Safety- Regional & Global Environmental Aspects- (1992-)