Arid regions help to retain part of the excess CO2

Washington State University researchers found that the arid areas, which are among the largest ecosystems on the planet, absorb an unexpected amount of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

With this discovery, you can now know how much of the carbon remains in the atmosphere as CO2, and how much is stored on land and in the ocean, other forms of the substance.

The study, published last week in Nature Climate Change, is the result of 10 years of experience, in which the researchers exposed tracts in the Mojave desert in California, the high levels of CO2, similar to those you would expect to find in 2050. They collected the soil and plants, up to three feet deep, and measured how much carbon was absorbed.

The work comes to a unknown facets of global warming: the degree to which land ecosystems absorb or emit CO2 when its presence increases in the atmosphere.

The arid areas receive less than 25 cm of rain per year, occupying an extensive range of 30 degrees North and South latitude. With the semi-arid areas, which receive less than 50 cm of rainfall per year, they account for almost half of the planet's surface.

In fact, as we stated in the Green forest soils, Savers have more organic matter and, if we make the account per square metre, retain more carbon. But as the arid soils cover much area, according to Science20, they can have a considerable role in the evaluation of carbon and in how much the Earth warms when greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

Foto: geographyalltheway.com/Creative Commons

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