For A New World View, chapter 5. Excerpt: Sensor-studded plots in the Amazon
forest will measure the fertilizing effect of the gas. ...The ways in
which rising carbon dioxide levels will affect the Amazon rainforest are
still highly uncertain. ...One of the wild cards in climate change is
the fate of the Amazon rainforest. Will it shrivel as the region dries
in a warming climate? Or will it grow even faster as the added carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere spurs photosynthesis and allows plants to use
water more efficiently? A dying rainforest could release gigatonnes of
carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating warming; a CO2-fertilized
forest could have the opposite effect, sucking up carbon and putting the
brakes on climate change. Climate modellers ... have had precious few
data to go on. ...Now an international team of scientists is developing
an ambitious experiment in the central Amazon that ... would bathe a
patch of rainforest in extra CO2 and, over the course of a decade or
more, measure how the plants respond.... http://www.nature.com/news/experiment-aims-to-steep-rainforest-in-carbon-dioxide-1.12855
, Jeff Tollefson, Nature. |
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