Soils are the biggest on land carbon store. Forests store carbon on an ongoing basis in soil. Leaves and twigs drop, taking carbon out of the air into organic matter that eventually becomes soil. And in some circumstances - eg compression by water - over millions of years this turns into sedimentary rock including of course what we now dig up as fossil fuels. (James Hutton developed his deep time theory on the basis of observing this on farmland, and in sedimentary rocks, in Scotland). Forests are endlessly taking carbon via photosynthesis out of the air and putting it in soils: secondary forests do this faster. But cutting old growth forests releases ghgs from soils and subsoils so cutting and replacing with new forests does not lock up more carbon. Some countries (Malaysia) call oil palm plantations forests but they have very few of the ecosystem functions of tropical trees. Exposed soils of the kind found under and between oil palms and on agricultural land between crops release carbon. UK soils presently release more carbon annually than they absorb through biomass growth and photosynthesis.
Professor Michael Northcott New College University of Edinburgh Mound Place Edinburgh EH1 2LX UK 0 (44) 131 650 7994 [email protected] ancestraltime.org.uk http://careforthefuture.exeter.ac.uk/blog/ edinburgh.academia.edu/MichaelNorthcott > On 12 Feb 2015, at 14:38, Robert H. Socolow <[email protected]> wrote: > > Many second-growth forests are still increasing their carbon stocks. I think > that's the argument being made. > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Feb 11, 2015, at 7:38 PM, David desJardins <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> forest has to be carbon-balanced, it isn't removing net carbon from the >> atmosphere but essentially all of the carbon taken up by plants eventually >> gets returned to the atmosphere when those > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "geoengineering" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
