Intensive Land-Management Leaves Europe Without Carbon Sinks
In order to compute whether European landscapes store or release greenhouse gases, climatologists have for the first time also considered methane and nitrogen oxide emissions from livestock farming and intensive agriculture. The bottom line is that forests, grasslands and agriculture fields, particularly in central Europe, freely release greenhouse gas (in carbon dioxide equivalents / red colouring in diagram). In this way they balance out the effect which Russian forests have as a source of carbon dioxide storage (blue colouring), almost completely.
Of all global carbon dioxide emissions, less than half accumulate in the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. The remainder is hidden away in oceans and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and peat-lands. Stimulating this “free service” of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems is considered one of the main, immediately available ways of reducing climate change. However, new greenhouse gas bookkeeping has revealed that for the European continent this service isn’t free after all. These findings are presented in the most recent edition of Nature Geoscience (Advanced Online Publication, November 22, 2009).
Researchers from 17 European countries cooperating in the EU-Integrated Project CarboEurope, led by Detlef Schulze, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany have compiled the first comprehensive greenhouse gas balance of Europe. They made two independent estimates: one based on what the atmosphere sees and one based on what terrestrial ecosystems see. (more…)
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