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I thought that when wood and other plants rotted, the main result was a lot of soil which I thought was heavily carbon, from the plants, from CO2, from the atmo
by graycat 12y ago
I thought that when wood and other plants
rotted, the main result was a lot of soil
which I thought was heavily carbon, from
the plants, from CO2, from the atmosphere.
Maybe I'm wrong about this?
Or, growing up, Dad put a lot of ammonium
nitrate NH4NO3 fertilizer on the lawn. Then
the lawn grew fast enough that I got the job
to mow the grass twice a week instead of once
each other week. After growing up in that house
with that lawn, all the grass clippings raised
the level of the top soil by about 1.5" -- this
was easy to see next to the concrete driveway
and walk ways which I observed close at hand as
I ran the electric edger, with its 35,000 RPM
motor, between the concrete and the lawn. So,
CO2 from the atmosphere turned into grass
turned into grass clippings turned into top soil
which no doubt had a lot of carbon, originally
from the CO2 in the atmosphere. While this is
many years later and I moved away long ago,
I have to believe that that top soil is still
there and very much is not going anywhere,
certainly not as CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Net, a lawn commonly does sequester carbon from
CO2 in the atmosphere. Here I'm just giving this point
as a biological fact and without any judgment
about this situation being good, bad, or otherwise
for anything in particular.
- nine_k 12y ago"Rotting" usually means being slowly consumed by fungi and bacteria, which ultimately break a good part of the cellulose down to very simple compounds like CO₂ and water.