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Grasslands show surprising response to global changes |
| TheallIneed/NC&T/UMB |
Their findings challenge the belief that natural ecosystems will be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide as scientists once thought and thus have serious implications for future climate change and global warming. Their research, released on August 9, will appear in the article "Responses of Grassland Production to Single and Multiple Global Environmental Change" in the October 2005 issue of PLoS Biology.
Dukes, Christopher Field, and their colleagues measured plant growth in California grasslands to examine how an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other green house gases in the Earth's atmosphere affect natural ecosystems. Over a five-year period, researchers from Carnegie Institution of Washington and Stanford University exposed grassland plots to a combination of current or increased levels of environmental factors to simulate likely regional changes over the next 100 years. They exposed the area to four expected changes: elevated levels of carbon dioxide, precipitation, temperature, and nitrogen deposition. Their study is the first to test the long-term, simultaneous and interacting global changes likely to be seen in the future.
 | | Jeffrey Dukes (Photo: Harry Brett) |
Dukes and his colleagues found that the strongest effect on grassland production came from elevated levels of nitrogen (which typically reaches a fertilization limit). Elevated temperature, precipitation, and CO2 had minimal impacts. These results suggest, the authors argue, the California grasslands, and ecosystems that respond similarly, are not likely to help buffer the rate of climate change.
"Our study suggests that despite earlier predictions that ecosystems would take up a lot more carbon, this may not always be the case and we can't rely on all ecosystems to do that," says Dukes. "If it turns out that other natural systems also fail to sequester as much carbon as scientists once thought, CO2 concentrations will rise even faster than expected."
Scientists in the project want to explore how other ecosystems will behave in the future and if they will take in more carbon as our consumption of fossil fuel and other green house gases increases. "Now the challenge is to figure out which ones will be helping to slow change, and which won't and why," says Dukes.
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