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Forests keep active in old age

Established forests may continue to increase soil carbon stores.

Old-growth forests can keep on squirreling away carbon from the atmosphere long after they have reached maturity, a study suggests. The discovery runs counter to the theory that established forests, although valuable stores of carbon, will not help to alleviate the greenhouse effect because they are already 'full' of carbon.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on November 30, 2006 07:00 PM |

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Comments

While it is pleasing to see more details on this, the point that the
soils of ancient or mature forests continuously accumulate and store
carbon has been well established in the literature for several years
already.

I am not sure why this should be seen as a surprise.

--

Dr T.M. Fenning.


Biochemistry department (Director : Professor Jonathan Gershenzon)

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
Beutenburg Campus
Hans-Knöll-Strasse 8
D-07745 Jena
Germany.

Posted by: Dr T.M. Fenning | December 13, 2006 10:52 AM

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