How important is carbon dioxide for fertilization? The reply to this is pretty astonishing. A new finding reveals that forest productivity may be significantly greater in an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and 10 other institutions in the United States and Europe have performed the study.
The experiments were conducted in a deciduous forest in Tennessee, a young hardwood stand in Wisconsin, a pine forest in North Carolina, and a high-productivity poplar plantation in Italy. It is from four experiments, the researchers analyzed data. In the experiment young forest stands were exposed for multiple years to an atmosphere with a carbon dioxide concentration predicted to occur in the middle of this century.
True, a strong relationship between productivity of forest plots in the current atmosphere and productivity in plots experimentally enriched with carbon dioxide is revealed in this work. But, now the question arises – who is going to thrive – the plants or the animals, insects and the humans?!
Via: Science Daily