Warmer temperatures due to climate change could cause soils
to release additional carbon into the atmosphere, thereby enhancing climate
change – but that effect diminishes over the long term, finds a new study in
the journal Nature Climate Change. The study, from UNH professor Serita Frey
and co-authors from the University of California-Davis and the Marine
Biological Laboratory, sheds new light on how soil microorganisms respond to
temperature and could improve predictions of how climate warming will affect
the carbon dioxide flux from soils.
The activities of soil microorganisms release 10 times the
carbon dioxide that human activities do on a yearly basis. Historically, this
release of carbon dioxide has been kept in check by plants’ uptake of the gas
from the atmosphere. However, human activities are potentially upsetting this
balance.