Human-made Carbon Dioxide May Release World's Soil's Store of Carbon

It turns out that human-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may just release the world's massive store of carbon. Scientists have found that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere could cause a chain reaction between plants and microorganisms that would unsettle the carbon reservoirs in soil.

The carbon in soil contains twice the amount of carbon in all plants and the Earth's atmosphere combined. This store of carbon, though, could become increasingly volatile as people add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, largely due to increased plant growth.

In order to examine how much carbon might be released, the researchers developed a computer model to show at a global scale the complex interaction between carbon,, plants and soil, which includes numerous bacteria, fungi, minerals and carbon compounds that respond in complex ways to temperature, moister and the carbon that plants contribute to soil.

As trees and other vegetation flourish due to increased carbon dioxide, their roots could stimulate microbial activity in soil. This, in turn, may accelerate the decomposition of soil carbon and its release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In other words, there could be a scenario in which there could be a runaway release of CO2.

"You should not count on getting more carbon storage in the soil just because tree growth is increasing," said Benjamin Sulman, one of the researchers, in a news release. He continued as he said, "The main interactions between roots and soil are important and shouldn't be ignored. Root growth and activity are such important drivers of what goes on in the soil, and knowing what the roots are doing could be an important part of understanding what the soil will be doing."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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