” Until now, little has actually been understood about the role of dead trees,” Professor Lindenmayer said.
” We know living trees play a vital function in soaking up co2 from the environment. However up till now, we didnt know what takes place when those trees decompose. It turns out, it has a massive effect.”
Teacher Lindenmayer stated the decay is driven by natural processes including temperature level and insects.
” The decomposition of wood and the recycling of those nutrients is a seriously essential process in forests,” he said.
The research showed decomposition cant occur without wood-boring insects such as Longicorn Beetles.
” We knew bugs such as termites and wood-boring Longicorn beetles can speed up nonessential decay,” research study co-author Dr. Marisa Stone from Griffith University said.
” But previously, we didnt understand how much they contribute to deadwood carbon release worldwide.
” Insects represented 29% of nonessential carbon release each year. Their function was disproportionately greater within the tropics and had little effect in areas of low temperatures.”
The international research study project incorporated 55 forest locations on six continents. The research study group studied wood from more than 140 tree species to determine the impact of environment on the rate of decay.
” Half the wood was placed in mesh cages which stayed out bugs, permitting us to study their contribution,” Professor Lindenmayer said.
” We found both the rate of decomposition and the contribution of insects are extremely based on the climate, and will increase as temperature levels increase. Greater levels of rainfall accelerate the decomposition in warmer regions and slow it down in lower temperature level areas.”
Tropical forests contribute 93 percent of all carbon released by nonessential, due to their high wood mass and fast rates of decomposition.
The research study was led by Dr. Sebastian Seibold from the Technical University of Munich.
” At a time of worldwide change, we can see some remarkable decreases in biodiversity and modifications in climate,” Dr. Seibold said.
” This study has shown that both environment modification and the loss of insects have the potential to modify the decomposition of wood, and therefore, carbon and nutrient cycles worldwide.”
The research study has actually been released in Nature.
Reference: “The contribution of insects to international forest deadwood decomposition” by Sebastian Seibold, Werner Rammer, Torsten Hothorn, Rupert Seidl, Michael D. Ulyshen, Janina Lorz, Marc W. Cadotte, David B. Lindenmayer, Yagya P. Adhikari, Roxana Aragón, Soyeon Bae, Petr Baldrian, Hassan Barimani Varandi, Jos Barlow, Claus Bässler, Jacques Beauchêne, Erika Berenguer, Rodrigo S. Bergamin, Tone Birkemoe, Gergely Boros, Roland Brandl, Hervé Brustel, Philip J. Burton, Yvonne T. Cakpo-Tossou, Jorge Castro, Eugénie Cateau, Tyler P. Cobb, Nina Farwig, Romina D. Fernández, Jennifer Firn, Kee Seng Gan, Grizelle González, Martin M. Gossner, Jan C. Habel, Christian Hébert, Christoph Heibl, Osmo Heikkala, Andreas Hemp, Claudia Hemp, Joakim Hjältén, Stefan Hotes, Jari Kouki, Thibault Lachat, Jie Liu, Yu Liu, Ya-Huang Luo, Damasa M. Macandog, Pablo E. Martina, Sharif A. Mukul, Baatarbileg Nachin, Kurtis Nisbet, John OHalloran, Anne Oxbrough, Jeev Nath Pandey, Tomáš Pavlíček, Stephen M. Pawson, Jacques S. Rakotondranary, Jean-Baptiste Ramanamanjato, Liana Rossi, Jürgen Schmidl, Mark Schulze, Stephen Seaton, Marisa J. Stone, Nigel E. Stork, Byambagerel Suran, Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, Simon Thorn, Ganesh Thyagarajan, Timothy J. Wardlaw, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Sungsoo Yoon, Naili Zhang and Jörg Müller, 1 September 2021, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-021-03740-8.
Credit: Australian National University
Decaying wood releases around 10.9 gigatons of carbon worldwide every year, according to a new research study by a global group of researchers.
This is roughly comparable to 115 percent of fossil fuel emissions.
Co-author of the study Professor David Lindenmayer from The Australian National University (ANU) states its the very first time scientists have been able to quantify the contribution of nonessential to the global carbon cycle.
