Sci-fi forest tracks carbon impact
An industrial-scale experiment in a Staffordshire forest will help fill gaps in knowledge about climate change.
The project has created an outdoor laboratory by encircling trees with 25m masts gushing high levels of carbon dioxide.
The site is surrounded by a 3m anti-climb fence, and silvery tubes snake along the forest floor in what looks like a sci-fi alien invasion.
The scientists behind the experiment want to find how forests will respond to the levels of carbon dioxide expected in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st Century.
That means full lab conditions: no food and drink in the woods, and no relieving yourself behind a tree.
The role of plants in taking up CO2 is one of the known unknowns in climatology. CO2 is a plant fertiliser and researchers think that as levels increase the trees will fix more of it into their trunks, roots and organic matter in the earth.
But they believe the fertilizing effect will be limited over time by other factors such as lack of nutrients, lack of water and rising temperatures.
Humans and forests currently participate in a mutually beneficial exchange in which trees are fed by increasing CO2, and the trees in turn lock up carbon that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere, heating the planet.
Trees are estimated to be storing between a quarter and a third of the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels, and the earth is becoming greener as a result.
One of the great imponderables in climate science is how long forests will continue to buffer climate change as CO2 levels continue to spiral.
The lead scientist in the woodland, Professor Rob Mackenzie, from Birmingham University, agreed that scientists had previously under-estimated the amount of carbon trees would fix.
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