Journal
NATURE
Volume 475, Issue 7355, Pages 214-U121Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/nature10176
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- DOE-NICCR
- NSF [DEB-0949460]
- Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology
- Marie Curie Actions under FP7
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect biotic and abiotic conditions in soil, such as microbial activity and water content(1,2). In turn, these changes might be expected to alter the production and consumption of the important greenhouse gases nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) (refs 2, 3). However, studies on fluxes of N2O and CH4 from soil under increased atmospheric CO2 have not been quantitatively synthesized. Here we show, using meta-analysis, that increased CO2 (ranging from 463 to 780 parts per million by volume) stimulates both N2O emissions from upland soils and CH4 emissions from rice paddies and natural wetlands. Because enhanced greenhouse-gas emissions add to the radiative forcing of terrestrial ecosystems, these emissions are expected to negate at least 16.6 per cent of the climate change mitigation potential previously predicted from an increase in the terrestrial carbon sink under increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations(4). Our results therefore suggest that the capacity of land ecosystems to slow climate warming has been overestimated.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available