{"id":54518,"date":"2018-07-11T07:45:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T05:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=54518"},"modified":"2018-07-09T09:13:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T07:13:43","slug":"expansion-of-agricultural-land-reduces-co2-absorption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/expansion-of-agricultural-land-reduces-co2-absorption\/","title":{"rendered":"Expansion of agricultural land reduces CO2<\/sub> absorption"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2018_074_Ausdehnung
New study suggests: The conversion of forests into agricultural land accelerates climate change (photo: Dr Anita Bayer, KIT\/IMK-IFU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Plants absorb some of the carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>) released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But increasing deforestation and other changes in land use will reduce the CO2<\/sub> absorption capacity of these areas in the future. This is what a study by climate researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) suggests. Their results are now published in Environmental Research Letters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Climate change is heavily related to the increase of CO2<\/sub> in the atmosphere. During photosynthesis, plants absorb some of the industrial CO2<\/sub> emissions from the atmosphere, making them contribute significantly to climate protection. \u201cThe CO2<\/sub> increase in the atmosphere is currently lower than to be expected from anthropogenic emissions,\u201d says Professor Almut Arneth from the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research \u2013 Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU) at KIT Campus Alpin in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. 20 to 25 percent of the CO2<\/sub> released by humans into the atmosphere is currently being absorbed by plants. \u201cThis effect curbs climate change; without it global warming would have progressed further by now,\u201d the scientist says. \u201cThe question is whether it will stay this way in the next few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

A research group led by Arneth and Dr Benjamin Quesada at IMK-IFU has dealt with the impact of changes in land use on the expected concentration of carbon dioxide \u2013 in other words CO2<\/sub> projection \u2013 in the earth’s atmosphere. Their study titled \u201cPotential strong contribution of future anthropogenic land-use and land-cover change to the terrestrial carbon cycle\u201d published in Environmental Research Letters shows that changes in land use have a significant impact on future CO2<\/sub> absorption from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

If forests are cut down in favor of arable land and pasture land, it reduces the capacity of plants and soil to take up CO2<\/sub>. \u201cThe wood in a forest can store more CO2<\/sub> than corn for example,\u201d explains Arneth who in her research deals with the interaction between the atmosphere, plants and soil. If deforestation were to continue, it could even be expected that large parts of the tropics will change from a CO2<\/sub> basin \u2013 which absorbs more CO2<\/sub> than it releases \u2013 to a CO2<\/sub> source.<\/p>\n

Researchers at KIT have summarized the results of five common climate models and looked at seven variables for 25 world regions to better understand the extent to which different changes in land use have an impact on CO2<\/sub> storage in vegetation, and as a result on the concentration in the atmosphere. The scenarios differ, for example, in how much leaf area there is in relation to soil area, how much the relevant plants grow, and how long a plant grows before it dies and releases CO2<\/sub> into the atmosphere. All the models were fed with the same assumptions to limit model-related uncertainties through the summary and detailed systematic analysis of the results. This makes the study more significant than previous investigations which were based only on individual models. \u201cWe have shown how important it is to include the expansion of agricultural land in climate projections and to adapt the models; there is still a lot of room for improvement,\u201d says the environmental researcher. \u201cThis study confirms how important it is to work toward ensuring that deforestation in the tropics and globally is reduced or stopped,\u201d says Arneth.<\/p>\n

Original publication<\/h3>\n

Benjamin Quesada, Almut Arneth, Eddy Robertson and Nathalie de Noblet: Potential strong contribution of future anthropogenic land-use and land-cover change to the terrestrial carbon cycle.\u00a0 Environmental Research Letters, 2018. http:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.1088\/1748-9326\/aac4c3\/meta<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study about the impact of changes in land use on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere \u2013 publication in Environmental Research Letters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[11859,6630],"supplier":[1563],"class_list":["post-54518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-agri","tag-agriculture","supplier-karlsruher-institut-fuer-technologie-kit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54518"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=54518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}