4 ms·
Not so. Stable biospheres continuously deposit carbon in the soil.
by hkt 5y ago
Not so. Stable biospheres continuously deposit carbon in the soil.
- sokoloff 5y agoYou just repeated your assertion from the prior comment. Maybe you’re right, but introducing additional data, information, or argument is more helpful to the discussion than just saying “Yuh-huh”
- hkt 5y agoI honestly thought this was so established as to be obvious. I was mistaken, so, sorry. Here's a link that talks about how plants deposit carbon into the soil: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/685/237929 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/685/237929 The key line would be this, from a cursory reading: "Long-term (millennia) C sequestration can be achieved when C from aboveground biomass transfers to the roots and enters the pool of SOC or SIC (hereafter SC, for soil C)." Obviously there's more context, but this is why old growth forests are huge carbon sinks: because they have undergone the process of sequestering carbon into the soil uninterrupted for such a long time. Again, apologies for taking the above for granted. Maybe it is less well known than I thought.
- sokoloff 5y agoThanks. I’ll have a read this weekend. I am among the people who assumed that over a hundred year period the overwhelming majority of carbon taken into plants was released back as CO2 through consumption, combustion, and decomposition (and that very little was permanently deposited into the soil).
- TeMPOraL 5y agoThanks for the link, I'll look at it too. I'm also in the group of people who assumed almost everything the plants sequester gets quickly recovered by other plants and organisms, and is part of the growth-sequester/decompose-release cycle.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoRemember the post-decomposition "soil" is extremely carbon rich.