Agricultural and Biofuel News: The critical role crops play in the Earth's CO2 cycle

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Agricultural and Biofuel News: The critical role crops play in the Earth's CO2 cycle

"Each year, the planet balances its budget. The carbon dioxide
absorbed by plants in the spring and summer as they convert solar energy
into food is released back to the atmosphere in autumn and winter.
Levels of the greenhouse gas fall, only to rise again.

But the budget has gotten bigger. Over the last five decades, the magnitude of
this rise and fall has grown nearly 50 percent in the Northern
Hemisphere, as the amount of the greenhouse gas taken in and released
has increased. Now, new research shows that humans and their crops have a
lot to do with it, highlighting the profound impact people have on the
Earth’s atmosphere.

In a study published Wednesday, Nov. 19, in Nature, scientists at Boston University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and McGill University show that a steep
rise in the productivity of crops grown for food accounts for as much as
25 percent of the increase in this carbon dioxide (CO2) seasonality.

It’s not that crops are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere; rather, if crops
are like a sponge for CO2, the sponge has simply gotten bigger and can
hold and release more of the gas.

With global food productivity expected to double over the next 50 years, the researchers say the findings should be used to improve climate models and better understand
the atmospheric CO2 buffering capacity of ecosystems, particularly as
climate change may continue to perturb the greenhouse gas budget."