As one descends a mountain, the temperature steadily increases. A new study by a team including Andrew Nottingham, a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, took advantage of this principle to predict what would happen as tropical soils warm. The team discovered that warmer tropical soils released more carbon, the species of soil microbes changed and microbial activity increased.
A major cause for concern associated with global warming is the possibility that as soils warm, additional carbon stored in soil organic material may be released into the atmosphere. This would contribute to climate warming and warm the soil even more, a ‘positive feedback loop,’ because global warming is caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere that traps heat from the sun on the Earth’s surface.
“If one accepts the current projections of a 4 to 8 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures during the next century, tropical soils could cause roughly a 9% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide this century,” Nottingham said.
Read more at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Image: Peruvian mountainside. Andrew Nottingham, research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, predicted the effects of climate warming on tropical soils by moving soil from a higher to lower elevation on a mountainside in the Peruvian Andes. CREDIT: Andrew Nottingham/ Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute