Could burying wood be the solution to combat climate change?

Researchers have found an modern technique to assist deal with local weather change: burying wooden underground. A 3,775-year-old log present in Canada has proven that wooden can protect its carbon content material for hundreds of years when buried in the precise circumstances. This discovery, led by local weather scientist Ning Zeng, suggests a low-cost, scalable option to lock carbon away.

The Preservation of Carbon in Buried Wooden

The traditional cedar log was discovered unexpectedly throughout an experiment in Quebec. It remained intact for millennia as a result of protecting layer of clay and oxygen-deprived groundwater, which shielded it from decomposers like fungi and micro organism. Radiocarbon relationship confirmed that lower than 5 p.c of its carbon had been misplaced over almost 4,000 years.

Burying Wooden to Scale back CO2 Emissions

Forests naturally soak up huge quantities of carbon dioxide, however most of it’s launched again into the air when timber decompose. This examine proposes that by burying wooden, particularly in preferrred soil circumstances, the release of carbon might be considerably slowed. Zeng’s analysis estimates that buried wooden might seize as much as 10 billion tons of CO2 yearly — equal to over 1 / 4 of world emissions from power.

A Sensible and Value-Efficient Resolution

The instruments required for this technique are easy — a tractor and backhoe. Moreover, it might utilise wooden that has no business use, decreasing prices. Whereas discovering applicable places for burial poses a problem, this low-tech answer could also be an efficient complement to high-tech carbon seize strategies.

Reversing the Local weather Disaster

In essence, this strategy is akin to reversing the method of coal formation, the place vegetation buried over hundreds of thousands of years turned one of many principal contributors to local weather change. This straightforward technique of burying wooden may play a vital function within the struggle towards rising temperatures.