carbon sources and sinks Archives

17 June 2020

Vulnerable carbon stores twice as high where permafrost subsidence is factored in, new research finds

Sinking terrain caused by the loss of ice and soil mass in permafrost is causing deeper thaw than previously thought and making vulnerable twice as much carbon as estimates that don’t account for this shifting ground.

Leafcutter ant colonies may be an overlooked source of carbon dioxide emissions, new study finds

Factories mass produce goods for society and many emit greenhouse gases in the process, but not all are run by humans. Some factories lie underground and are operated around the clock by tireless six-legged workers. A new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, shows leafcutter ant nests can emit carbon dioxide at a rate thousands of times higher than regular soil.

What role do rivers play in the carbon cycle?

The importance of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in climate change is spurring studies to assess each source where the gas is emitted and each ‘sink’ (like forests and soils) where it is absorbed – and how much carbon comes and goes from each. At the Meeting of the Americas, David Butman of Yale University presented the first estimate of how much carbon enters the atmosphere annually from the rivers and …