In a surprising finding, North Carolina State University
researchers have shown that certain underground organisms thought to promote
chemical interactions that make the soil a carbon sink actually play a more
complex, dual role when atmospheric carbon levels rise.
In a paper published in the Aug. 31 edition of Science,
North Carolina State University researchers show that important and common soil
microscopic organisms, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), play a role in
sequestering carbon below ground, trapping it from escaping into the atmosphere
as a greenhouse gas.