Savannas and grasslands in drier climates around the world store more heat-trapping carbon than scientists thought they did and are helping to slow the rate of climate warming, according to a new study.
Savannas and grasslands in drier climates around the world store more heat-trapping carbon than scientists thought they did and are helping to slow the rate of climate warming, according to a new study.
The study, published online Oct. 2 in Nature Climate Change, is based on a reanalysis of datasets from 53 long-term fire-manipulation experiments worldwide, as well as a field-sampling campaign at six of those sites.
Twenty researchers from institutions around the globe, including two at the University of Michigan, looked at where and why fire has changed the amount of carbon stored in topsoil. They found that within savanna-grassland regions, drier ecosystems were more vulnerable to changes in wildfire frequency than humid ecosystems.
“The potential to lose soil carbon with very high fire frequencies was the greatest in dry areas, and the potential to store carbon when fires were less frequent was also the greatest in dry areas,” said study lead author Adam Pellegrini, currently an IGCB Exchange Professor at U-M’s Institute for Global Change Biology. His primary appointment is at the University of Cambridge.
Read more at University of Michigan
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