SCIENCE IN THE NEWS
from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Today's Headlines - September 21, 2006
Carbon from Dying Trees May Add to Climate Change
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
In the middle of Terry McGlynn's lab at the University of San Diego sits a
seemingly incongruous object for a biologist dedicated to teasing out
secrets about how tropical rain forests work. It's a brown metallic Singer
sewing machine that looks to be decades old. Around it are neatly sewn bags
about the size of McGlynn's hand and remnants of mesh materials from which
the bags are made.
The sewing machine, it turns out, is one small piece of a major scientific
undertaking to examine the relationship between tropical rain forests and
global warming. McGlynn and several colleagues in the Ciclos Project in
Costa Rica are trying to model how carbon and nutrients such as phosphorous
flow through the ecosystem.
For years, Central and South American woodlands have been popularly
regarded as carbon sponges that help combat greenhouse gas buildup by
absorbing and storing atmospheric carbon. But now, Ciclos scientists and
others are exploring more sinister ways in which the forests may be
involved in climate change - by releasing more and more carbon as
environmental conditions shift.
