The world’s largest tropical peatland turned from being a major store of carbon to a source of carbon dioxide emissions as a result of climate change thousands of years ago, new research has revealed.
The world’s largest tropical peatland turned from being a major store of carbon to a source of carbon dioxide emissions as a result of climate change thousands of years ago, new research has revealed.
Around the time that Stonehenge was built, 5,000 years ago, the climate of central Congo began to dry, leading to the peatlands emitting carbon dioxide.
The Congo peatlands only stopped releasing carbon and reverted back to taking carbon out of the atmosphere when the climate got wetter again in the past 2,000 years, according to a major international study co-coordinated by the University of Leeds.
Read more at: University of Leeds
Congo basin peatlands expedition, from 2018 (Photo Credit: Greenpeace/Kevin McElvaney)
