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Land stores vast amounts of carbon, but a new study led by Cranfield University s Dr Alice Johnston suggests that how much of this carbon enters the atmosphere as temperatures rise depends on how far that land sits from the equator.
Ecosystems on land are made up of plants, soils, animals, and microbes - all growing, reproducing, dying, and breathing in a common currency; carbon. And how much of that carbon is breathed out (also known as ecosystem respiration) compared to how much is stored (through primary production) has impacts for climate change.
A key concern is that if more carbon is respired than stored, the rate of climate change could accelerate even further. Yet, some big assumptions are made in the models used to predict climate changes - that ecosystem respiration rises with temperature at the same rate (doubles for a temperature rise of 10 °C) irrespective of the ecosystem itself. A new study Temperature thresholds to ecosystem respiration at a global sc
Although the use of pesticides in agriculture is increasing, some farms have transitioned to organic practices and avoid applying them. But it s uncertain whether chemicals applied to land decades ago can continue to influence the soil s health after switching to organic management. Now, researchers reporting in ACS
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IMAGE: Field crew downloading data from a continuously operating Global Positioning station in the Sierra Negra caldera, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. view more
Credit: Keith Williams (UMAVCO, Inc).
Hours before the 2018 eruption of Sierra Negra, the Galápagos Islands largest volcano, an earthquake rumbled and raised the ground more than 6 feet in an instant. The event, which triggered the eruption, was captured in rare detail by an international team of scientists, who said it offers new insights into one of the world s most active volcanoes. The power of this study is that it s one of the first times we ve been able to see a full eruptive cycle in this detail at almost any volcano, said Peter La Femina, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State. We ve monitored Sierra Negra from when it last erupted in 2005 through the 2018 eruption and beyond, and we have this beautiful record that s a rarity in itself.