Published in ERW, 18 Dec 2014
As climate change causes wildfires to become more prevalent, you’d expect a net increase in atmospheric carbon. But that’s not the result from a computer model of Australian vegetation, which suggests that extended burnt areas will actually enlarge the country’s carbon sink. The results – which are due partly to a phenomenon called carbon dioxide fertilization, and partly to the ability of certain trees to recover quickly after forest fires – are likely to apply to other savannah and semi-arid regions of the world, the study’s authors believe.
“We were initially very surprised because warmer and drier conditions are generally considered to increase the risk of wildfires, and the prevalent idea in Australia is that we can expect more fires in the future,” said Sandra Harrison of the University of Reading, UK. “We were also surprised because if you burn more then, all things being equal, you should be releasing carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the carbon stored on land – at least until the vegetation has time to recover. However, when we started thinking about our apparently surprising results, they started to make more sense.” […]
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