Posted on 09/21/2021 11:42:53 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Decaying wood releases around 10.9 gigatons of carbon worldwide every year, according to a new study by an international team of scientists.
This is roughly equivalent to 115 percent of fossil fuel emissions.
Co-author of the study Professor David Lindenmayer from The Australian National University (ANU) says it’s the first time researchers have been able to quantify the contribution of deadwood to the global carbon cycle.
“Until now, little has been known about the role of dead trees,” Professor Lindenmayer said.
“We know living trees play a vital role in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But up until now, we didn’t know what happens when those trees decompose. It turns out, it has a massive impact.”
Professor Lindenmayer said the decomposition is driven by natural processes including temperature and insects.
“The decomposition of wood and the recycling of those nutrients is a critically important process in forests,” he said.
The research showed decomposition can’t happen without wood-boring insects such as Longicorn Beetles.
“We knew insects such as termites and wood-boring Longicorn beetles can accelerate deadwood decomposition,” study co-author Dr. Marisa Stone from Griffith University said.
“But until now, we didn’t know how much they contribute to deadwood carbon release globally.
“Insects accounted for 29% of deadwood carbon release each year. However, their role was disproportionately greater within the tropics and had little effect in regions of low temperatures.”
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
So, not man made.
That does it! Now we have to kill all the trees!
Shouldn’t that read “dead wood”?
Kristi Noem’s fault ;=P
That is a lot of f**ks.
It gets absorbed by the living trees.
So does all that stuff coming out of your tailpipe.
Plant food.
Yes, just as president Ronald Reagan said in 1981. “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” he opined. ... In hot weather, trees release volatile organic hydrocarbons including terpenes and isoprenes - two molecules linked to photochemical smog. In very hot weather, the production of these begins to accelerate.May 13, 2004
All the oil and gas were once biological material. That what the tell me, there is no such thing as abiogenic petroleum .
Dead wood? Does that specifically include every democrat male?
Is the 11 Gigatons WITH or WITHOUT all the CO2 from fires from poorly managed forests and from all the dead, decaying trees left on the ground after the forest fires?
But that’s natural carbon. It doesn’t do any harm unlike fossil fuels.
/sarc
I would hate to live next to a dairy farm full of dead wood.
From the headline, I thought there was something seriously wron in South Dakota.
Excellent study...
Reminds me that it is way past time for me to re-watch the Deadwood DVDs...
The fallacy of saving old growth trees is that a tree, at an age, stops absorbing co2 and starts to expelled it.
Forest fires put more dioxins into the ground water than bleached paper mills do. Many times more. Yet the paper industry was punished for dioxin levels that could not be measured by the then available technology.
Both ideologies were meant to stop ALL logging.
By the way...there are more trees growing in North America today than when Columbus etc came here.
Hug a logger. You’ll never go back to trees
I thought this was about the HBO series Deadwood.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.