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Carbon dioxide loss from tropical soils increases on warming

Plots of tropical forest soils were warmed by 4 °C for two years to observe the effects on soil carbon emissions. The increase in efflux of carbon dioxide was larger than expected — a result with worrying implications for climate change.
  1. Eric A. Davidson

    1. Eric A. Davidson is in the Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Frostburg, Maryland 21532, USA.

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The carbon stored in soil could have a big impact on climate change. The global flux of carbon in and out of soils is six to ten times greater than the emissions of carbon dioxide produced as a result of human activities1,2. The inputs of carbon to soils from plant detritus (dead wood, leaves and roots) roughly balance the losses to the atmosphere produced by the respiration of soil microorganisms that feed on that material. However, just a 1% imbalance of global soil-carbon effluxes over influxes would equal about 10% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions. Carbon in tropical soils was thought to be less vulnerable to loss under climate change than is soil carbon at higher latitudes, but experimental evidence for this was lacking. In a paper in Nature, Nottingham et al.3 report that tropical-forest soils might be more vulnerable to warming than was thought.

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Nature 584, 198-199 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02266-9

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