HONG KONG: Semi-arid landscapes like savannahs and shrublands play a major role in trapping carbon and could accelerate or slow down climate change, says a new international study.
The study calls for a heightened effort to manage and protect the semi-arid regions of the world, most of which falls in some of the poorer nations.
Researchers led by Anders Ahlström from Lund University and Stanford University, show that semi-arid ecosystems are more dynamic than tropical rainforests, with changing conditions dictating the amount of carbon stored in them.
“Understanding the processes responsible for trends and variability of the carbon cycle, and where they occur, provides insight into the future evolution of the carbon sink in a warmer world and the vital role natural ecosystems may play in accelerating or slowing down human-induced climate change,” says Anders Ahlström.
Unlike rainforests which have a fixed intake of carbon (which is high) with little room to fit in more plants, in savannahs with increasing productivity there is room to fit in more trees whose growing biomass provides a carbon sink.
Unlike the unchanging typical moist, hot weather conditions of rainforests, savannahs spring to life in wetter years, causing large fluctuations in carbon dioxide uptake between wet and dry years.
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