{"id":7013,"date":"2015-03-31T07:24:51","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T12:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7013"},"modified":"2015-03-31T07:24:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T12:24:51","slug":"earths-second-lung-has-emphysema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7013","title":{"rendered":"Earth\u2019s Second Lung Has Emphysema"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"lh-34 pad-t-35  mar-b-0\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ourworld.unu.edu\/en\/earths-second-lung-has-emphysema\" target=\"_blank\">Earth\u2019s Second Lung Has Emphysema<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Many consider forests as the \u2018lungs\u2019 of the planet \u2014 the idea that trees and other plants take up carbon and produce oxygen (the carbon and oxygen cycles). If we are to be fair though, the oceans store about 93% of the Earth\u2019s carbon pool (excluding the lithosphere and fossil fuels) and oceanic phytoplankton produces between 50 and 80% of the oxygen in the atmosphere. For comparison, the terrestrial biosphere \u2014 including forests \u2014 stores only about 5% of the Earth\u2019s carbon and produces most of the remainder of atmospheric oxygen.<\/p>\n<p>So, there\u2019s no denying that the biggest player in these cycles is the ocean, but that\u2019s not the topic of today\u2019s post. Instead, I\u2019m going to focus on the terrestrial biosphere and in particular, the carbon storage and flux of forests.<\/p>\n<p>Now it\u2019s pretty well established that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1201609\">tropical forests are major players in the terrestrial carbon cycle<\/a>, with the most accepted estimates of about 55% the terrestrial carbon stock stored therein. The\u00a0<a title=\"Fragmen borealis: degradation of the world\u2019s last great forest\" href=\"http:\/\/conservationbytes.com\/2009\/08\/12\/fragmen-borealis-degradation-of-the-worlds-last-great-forest\/\">extensive boreal forest<\/a>, covering most of the northern half of North America, most of Scandinavia and a huge chunk of Russia, comes in globally at about 33%, and temperate forests store most of the remainder.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That is, until now.<\/p>\n<p>A niggly issue with estimating global carbon stocks in forests is that quite a bit of it is stored underground. In tropical forests at least (not including the few peatland forests), most (&gt; 50%) of the carbon resides in the living biomass above the soil; however, in boreal forests where peatlands are extensive, 95% of the carbon is found\u00a0<em>below<\/em>\u00a0ground in the peat and soils. While most of this subsurface carbon is found in the top layers of the soil and peat, if you don\u2019t dig down deep enough, you might miss an important component of the total carbon stock.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earth\u2019s Second Lung Has Emphysema Many consider forests as the \u2018lungs\u2019 of the planet \u2014 the idea that trees and other plants take up carbon and produce oxygen (the carbon and oxygen cycles). If we are to be fair though, the oceans store about 93% of the Earth\u2019s carbon pool (excluding the lithosphere and fossil [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4556,112,141,4553,328,4557,4555,4554],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-atmosphere","tag-carbon","tag-climate-change","tag-forests","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-global-carbon-stocks","tag-oxygen","tag-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7014,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions\/7014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}