“Manhattan-sized Accumulations of Ancient Logs Could Release Millions of Tons of Carbon: Study”

Now, with rising temperatures and rising sea levels, that impasse may be at risk of collapsing and dissolving more quickly, said Alicia Syndrowsky, a Michigan Technological University researcher who led the study.

natural carbon sinks, such as forests, peatlands, and oceans, Important dampers of climate change because they sequester more carbon than is released into the atmosphere. It is estimated that the Earth’s carbon sinks absorb a quarter of world emissions, which is a powerful but not always well-understood factor in slowing warming.

However, not all carbon deposits can withstand high temperatures, and some can collapse quickly if pressed too hard. Permafrost starts to thaw slowly, then thaws very quickly, for example, raising fears of releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and a problem of accumulation in itself.

Scientists are racing to determine how much carbon is absorbed in wood in the Arctic, and how much may be lost to the atmosphere as a result of climate change, as wood that has been stable for hundreds or even thousands of years begins to collapse as it rises. temperature.

“We don’t have a good understanding, in a systematic way, of the other large wood deposits,” says Cendrowski.

The massive accumulation of wood I studied covered an area of ​​20 square miles, scattered in sediments in the delta of the Mackenzie River, the head of the powerful river that sweeps Canada.

The abundance of wood can store about 3.4 million tons of carbon, according to Sendrowski’s research, published in Journal of Geophysics Research Letters. It attempted to map the deadlock and estimate its weight and carbon content for the first time, using a combination of drone and satellite imaging and artificial intelligence to estimate the amount of visible wood. He says this is equivalent to the emissions of 2.5 million cars over the course of a year.

The oldest wood found at Sendrowski, he said, was about 1,300 years old, according to radiocarbon dating, although most were less than 70 years old.

He’s still not sure whether the deadlock is losing carbon faster than it’s accumulating through new trees drifting into it, but he says the process will likely start to speed up.

Living trees that have taken root in the permafrost can further fall into rivers as the ground beneath thaws. Warmer temperatures can speed up the decomposition process as logs rub against each other, throwing off more material and floating out into the open ocean, where they decompose more quickly than if they were left trapped in the forest, Cyndrowski said.

Understanding the world’s carbon sinks

Forests are an important carbon sink on Earth. And research shows that even now, as carbon emissions have increased, so has their ability to absorb at least some of it. Smithsonian researcher Sean McMahon found that the trees he studied near the Chesapeake Bay grew two to four times faster than he had anticipated. This may be because increased levels of carbon dioxide help plants grow faster and because higher temperatures extend the growing season and speed up other processes necessary for plant growth.

But other carbon sinks can be found in unusual places – like the forearm, the stretch of land between a volcano and ocean trench, which Researchers believe it sequesters carbon Which rises in the form of gas from the ground.

Another possibility is water flowing across the salty plains of the Taklamakan Desert in China’s Xinjiang province, which may be pulling carbon from the air as it sinks into the aquifer, according to research by Yan Li, a professor at Zhejiang University of Agriculture and Forestry. .

In Canada, Sendrowski plans to continue researching the deadlock, which is one of at least a dozen major timber formations in the far north. One question you’ll want to answer is the average age of wood, which will give a more accurate picture of how long wood traps carbon before it is released. And you want to determine the amount of wood that you can’t see in an aerial photo.

“We don’t have a measure of what’s buried, what’s buried, and what’s under the canopy cover,” he said.

The “decay time scale” would help “better capture the carbon storage potential of the system,” he said.