Global warming causes soil to give up carbon

Eugene S. Takle
© 2005

Warmer atmospheric temperatures warm the soil and increase microbial and chemical processes therein. Bellamy et al. (2005) studied changes in soil carbon in England and Wales between 1978 and 2003 for over 6,000 locations and found that all soils sampled are losing carbon, most likely due to global warming. Their research has four major implications (Schulze and Freibauer, 2005):

  1. Soil carbon losses occurred regardless of soil properties
  2. Losses were proportional to the carbon content of soil being sampled
  3. Losses occurred regardless of type of land-use
  4. Soil is not a general sink for carbon

Bellamy et al. (2005) calculated a mean rate of loss of soil carbon to be 0.6% per year. This represents about 13 million metric tonnes of carbon per year which is equivalent to 8% of the UK annual carbon dioxide emissions.

References

Bellamy, P. H., and Co-authors, 2005: Carbon losses from all soils across England and Wales 1978-2003. Nature, 437, 245-248.

Schulze, E. D., and A. Freibauer, 2005: Carbon unlocked from soils. Nature, 437, 205-206.