Eco News #21 – polluted soil reduces the plants’ CO2 absorption

October 6th, 2012

Good morning Greenzoners, and this is the new Eco News. 😉

As we know, the extremely important plant ability is to absorb carbon-dioxyde (CO2) and emit oxygen.  It’s especially necessary for us when the CO2 emission is so huge.
Intensified pollution and gas emissions not only increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but also degrades the soil.  It was recently discovered that unfertile, polluted soils may reduce the plants’ CO2 absorbing ability.
It is caused by too little nitrogen in the soil, and the less fertile and healthy the soil is, the smaller amount of CO2 can be absorbed from the atmosphere.

One of the researchers, Peter Reich, said this as a closing statement: “It would be better if there were experiments like ours in tropical rain forest, temperate forest, and tundra, to see how well responses there match with what we have found. But as such experiments do not exist, our results play an important role in addressing this issue for ecosystems everywhere.

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