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organic matter

Methane From Thawing Permafrost | Earth Wise

June 29, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Arctic permafrost contains a massive amount of carbon in the form of frozen soil, which contains remnants of plants and animals that died millennia ago.  Estimates are that there is 2 ½ times as much carbon trapped in this Arctic soil than there is in total in the atmosphere today.

As the Arctic warms, the permafrost is starting to thaw.  Once that happens, microbes begin to consume the previously frozen organic matter trapped in the soil.  As part of this process, the microbes produce large amounts of methane, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas.   Thus, there continues to be great concern that wide-scale thawing of the permafrost would result in massive amounts of methane being released into the atmosphere.

A recent study in northern Sweden revealed a glimmer of hope.  The study gauged methane emissions from a swath of permafrost that thawed in the 1980s and another that thawed 10 or 15 years later. 

In the first area, as ice melted underground, water on the surface sank down into the soil.  As the surface dried out, new plants emerged that helped to keep methane emissions buried underground.

Grasses found in wet areas have straw-like structures that convey oxygen to their roots.  The straws also allow methane in the soil to escape into the atmosphere.  As the areas dry out, other plants lacking the straws can sometimes replace the grasses.  When methane can’t escape, soil bacteria break it down into carbon dioxide.

The result is that the permafrost releases only a tenth of the methane as expected.  The hope is that changes in plant cover driven by climate change may limit methane emissions from thawing permafrost.

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Thawing Permafrost In Sweden Releases Less Methane Than Feared, Study Finds

Photo, posted July 7, 2014, courtesy of NPS Climate Change Response via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Peatlands And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise

July 21, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Peatlands play a significant role in greenhouse gas emissions

As the world seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that have been warming the climate, most of the focus has been on the primary contributors to the problem, such as the burning of fossil fuels.  But there are many smaller contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that individually play only a minor role but collectively add up to significant amounts.  One of these is the emissions from peatlands.

Peatlands are a type of wetland that occur in almost every country on Earth, covering 3% of the global land surface.  They are terrestrial ecosystems in which waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing.  As a result, the production of organic matter exceeds its decomposition, which results in a net accumulation of peat.  Peatlands are, in fact, the largest natural terrestrial carbon store, storing more over 700 billion tons of carbon, more than all other types of vegetation combined.

Human activity, such as creating drainage in peatlands for agriculture and forest plantation, results in the release of over 1.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. This constitutes 3% of all global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.

Large numbers of people rely on peatlands for their livelihoods, so it is not reasonable for these emission-generating activities to be greatly curtailed.  But researchers at the University of Leicester in the UK analyzed the potential effects of cutting the current drainage depths in croplands and grasslands on peat in half and showed that this could reduce CO2 emissions by more than 500 million tons a year. This equates to one percent of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.

There are numerous opportunities to reduce emissions a little bit at a time.

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Better peatland management could cut half a billion tonnes of carbon

Photo, posted August 17, 2013, courtesy of Joshua Mayer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Hidden Source Of Arctic Carbon | Earth Wise

April 24, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

carbon in arctic coastal waters

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Florida State University have published a paper presenting evidence of significant and previously undetected concentrations and fluxes of dissolved organic matter entering Arctic coastal waters.  The source of the organic matter is groundwater flow atop the frozen permafrost.  The groundwater moves from land to sea unseen, but the new research reveals that it carries significant concentrations of carbon and other nutrients to Arctic coastal food webs.

Globally, groundwater is important for delivering carbon and other nutrients to oceans, but in the Arctic, where much water is trapped in the permafrost, its role was thought to be minimal.  But the new research reveals that groundwater may be contributing an amount of dissolved organic matter to the Alaskan Beaufort Sea that is comparable to what comes from neighboring rivers during the summer.

The researchers found that shallow groundwater flows beneath the surface and picks up new, young organic carbon and nitrogen, but it also mixes with layers of deeper soils and thawing permafrost, picking up and transporting century-to-millennia old organic carbon and nitrogen.  This material is unique because it is directly transported to the ocean without seeing or being photodegraded by sunlight and may be valuable as a food source to bacteria and higher organisms that live in Arctic coastal waters.

The study concluded that the supply of leachable organic carbon from groundwater amounts to as much as 70% of the dissolved organic matter that enters the Beaufort Sea from rivers during the summer.  The role that groundwater inputs play in Arctic coastal ecosystems will be an area of active research for years to come.

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Hidden Source of Carbon Found at the Arctic Coast

Photo, posted June 14, 2015, courtesy of Eugen Marculesco via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Better Filter For Saltwater

November 26, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/EW-11-26-18-A-Better-Saltwater-Filter.mp3

Turning seawater into drinkable water is a highly desirable capability given that fresh water is generally in short supply and seawater is endlessly abundant.  Desalination plants typically strain salt out of seawater by pumping it through films made of polyamide.  Polyamide filters are riddled with tiny pores that allow water molecules to squeeze through, but not sodium ions.

[Read more…] about A Better Filter For Saltwater

Carbon From The Alaskan Tundra

June 15, 2017 By EarthWise

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/EW-06-15-17-Carbon-from-the-Alaskan-Tundra.mp3

The soils that encircle the northern reaches of the Arctic are a vast repository for carbon in the form of undecayed organic matter from dead vegetation.  The enormous amount of material trapped in the permafrost contains enough carbon to double the current amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.

[Read more…] about Carbon From The Alaskan Tundra

Grass-Powered Cars

August 26, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EW-08-26-16-Grass-Powered-Cars.mp3

Several major automakers are betting on hydrogen-powered cars as the future of personal transportation.  The first of these cars are already available in California.  What isn’t readily available is the hydrogen to power them.  There are very few hydrogen stations out there and hydrogen is pretty expensive.

[Read more…] about Grass-Powered Cars

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