ScienceDaily (June 15, 2012) — When it comes to understanding climate change, it's all about the dirt. A new study by researchers at BYU, Duke and the USDA finds that soil plays an important role in controlling the planet's atmospheric future.The researchers set out to find how intact ecosystems are responding to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Earth's current atmospheric carbon dioxide is 390 parts per million, up from 260 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution, and will likely rise to more than 500 parts per million in the coming decades.
What they found, published in the current issue of Nature Climate Change, is that the interaction between plants and soils controls how ecosystems respond to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
"As we forecast what the future is going to look like, with the way we've changed the global atmosphere, often times we overlook soil," said BYU biology professor Richard Gill, a coauthor on the study. "The soils matter enormously and the feedbacks that occur in the soil are ultimately going to control the atmosphere."
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