Carbon emissions from forest soils are likely to increase with rising temperatures

Boreal forest soils are key reservoirs that help keep the carbon dioxide that trees breathe in and use for photosynthesis from escaping back into the atmosphere. But a unique experiment led by Peter Reich of the University of Michigan shows that on a warming planet, more carbon is escaping from the soil than is being added by plants. This is not good news because it suggests that as the world warms, soils will return some of their carbon to the atmosphere," said Reich, director of the Institute for Global Change Biology at UM. (University of Michigan, more at phys.org)