Rather than considering the job done, Tasmania should seize opportunities including renewable energy, net-zero industrial exports and forest preservation.
Peat beds around the world hold huge quantities of carbon and keep it from warming the planet. But rising temperatures and over-use could turn them from a brake on climate change into an accelerant.
As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon is not only an important carbon sink, but also home to thousands of species of plants and animals and a crucial part of the water cycle.
Microscopic ocean phytoplankton feed a “biological pump” that carries carbon from the surface to deep waters. Scientists have found that this process stores much more carbon than previously thought.
Plants take carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, but it goes straight back when they die or are harvested. There is an important difference between carbon fluxes and actual carbon sequestration.
Storing more carbon in soil helps slow climate change and makes croplands more productive. But there are two kinds of soil carbon that are both important, but function very differently.
Dries Roobroeck, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
Unused biomass residues from maize, sorghum, rice, millet and groundnut in Uganda show to offer unique opportunities for circular production and soil amendment of biochar.
A new report calls land key to solving climate change. The good news is that there are strategies for reducing carbon emissions from land use that can also produce economic and social benefits.
Protecting forests and wetlands, which absorb and store carbon, is one way to slow climate change. Scientists are proposing similar treatment for marine animals that help store carbon in the oceans.