Dr Dan Metcalfe at the department has written a perspective piece in Science about a featured paper. The paper itself looked at the effect of 26 years of continual experimental warming on soil microbial populations and carbon cycling. The authors found that over extended periods of warming the soil microbial population changed in various ways which increased their ability to break down previously inaccessible carbon compounds. Dan concluded that “If these findings hold more widely across major terrestrial ecosystems, then a much greater portion of the global soil carbon store could potentially be vulnerable to decomposition and release as CO2 under global warming than previously thought.”
“[A] much greater portion of the global soil carbon store could potentially be vulnerable to decomposition and release as CO2 under global warming than previously thought”
Dan Metcalfe has written a perspective piece in Science about a recently published paper.