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  • RESEARCH SUMMARY

Balancing carbon storage under elevated CO2

A global synthesis of experiments reveals that increases in plant biomass under conditions of elevated CO2 mean that plants need to mine the soil for nutrients, which decreases soil’s ability to store carbon. In forests, elevated CO2 generally seems to greatly increase plant biomass, but not soil carbon. In grasslands, by contrast, it causes small changes in biomass and large increases in soil carbon.
  1. César Terrer

    1. Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA; and the Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

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This is a summary of Terrer, C. et al. A trade-off between plant and soil carbon storage under elevated CO2. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03306-8 (2021).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01117-5

References

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  5. Terrer, C., Vicca, S., Hungate, B. A., Phillips, R. P. & Prentice, I. C. Science 353, 72–74 (2016).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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