Upper Farms Exhale More Air

Many tracts peat stretches to the far north of our planet, where material resources are found that are too wet to survive. Although peat areas account for only 3% of the world’s population, they conserve about one third of the world’s carbon. And scientists are worried about climate: As the southern Arctic warms up, it dries up and emits high levels of carbon dioxide. People are speeding up the process by clearing grazing land and turning it into farmland, giving off greenhouse gases.

Soon paper in the newspaper Scientific Advances, researchers say the figure is growing in agriculture in the following areas: Comparing the land use, he calculated that between 1750 and 2010, agricultural land in northern peatland produced 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

“When the peat land dries – that is, people dig trenches to divert water to the peatland water – peat soils are enlarged by the decay of micro-organisms, which require oxygen, are enlarged, thus enabling carbon dioxide to be released from the soil. to peat into space, “lead author Chunjing Qiu, of France Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory and Paris-Saclay University, wrote in an email to WIRED. Any new plant that grows and dies there decomposes quickly, releasing its oxygen, because there is not enough water to slow down the organic processing in CO₂.

Traditionally, climate scientists have looked closely at the amount of carbon that we can lose by cutting down trees, but they have not analyzed the frequency of changes that lead to the conversion of salt fields into fields. “We have not always done well in calculating the amount of carbon dioxide that can be lost from soil system, ”says scientist Maria Strack, who studies forestry at the University of Waterloo, but did not participate in the study. “In particular, we are turning salt fields into arable land. The size of natural soils is so large that we may have been neglecting land contributions that have damaged our greenhouse gases.”

Personality, then, turns into a difficult cabbage to be source about air. There are, of course, social causes for this change: As the population grows, countries need to feed more people in the same area. Economically, it is understandable that farmers are turning what was once useless into farms. “They make fertile soil, but you lose your breath right away,” says biologist Chris Evans of the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology, who did not participate in the paper. “Because a lot of air is lost in some of these places, it’s like an empty carbon storage tank, really.”

Agricultural methods only aggravate this loss. The cultivation of dry peat allows fresh air to enter, which in turn promotes the processing of CO’s raw materials.₂. Pathogens grow more if farmers add fertilizers that provide them with additional nutrients. Instead of flat surface, the plant that produces it must stick and, as soon as it dies, be re-buried in the ground, where its carbon will be trapped for at least thousands of years. But on the farm, the crops that the land produces are uprooted and taken to market.

Farmers working on arable land irrigation will irrigate, so that the soil is moist enough for the crops to grow. But if left unmanaged, they can be left astray and lose the right path. Because peat is high in carbon, it burns easily – but not like the big fire you see California or Australia. Instead of making a flame, the sweet, it burns underground and then moves back through the space. Peat fires are so resilient that they can survive secretly in winter because snow often falls on the surface spring up again when the form melts in the year. That is why scientists call them a zombie fire. They can release 100 cargo carbon that the flame of the fire may burn up.

The environment is also drying up the forests on their own while the northern hemisphere is getting hotter. The entire Arctic I give birth to you as plant species go north due to climate change. Warmer temperatures mean more thunderstorms, giving them the power to light a massive peat fire: By 2100, lightning is striking in the far north can double.

It is very important, therefore, to restore the forests that farmers have already planted. “Not only will you reduce your gas from oxygen pollution, but you will also reduce your risk of fire,” says Strack.