Publication Date:
2007-10-27
Description:
Agricultural soil erosion is thought to perturb the global carbon cycle, but estimates of its effect range from a source of 1 petagram per year(-1) to a sink of the same magnitude. By using caesium-137 and carbon inventory measurements from a large-scale survey, we found consistent evidence for an erosion-induced sink of atmospheric carbon equivalent to approximately 26% of the carbon transported by erosion. Based on this relationship, we estimated a global carbon sink of 0.12 (range 0.06 to 0.27) petagrams of carbon per year(-1) resulting from erosion in the world's agricultural landscapes. Our analysis directly challenges the view that agricultural erosion represents an important source or sink for atmospheric CO2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Van Oost, K -- Quine, T A -- Govers, G -- De Gryze, S -- Six, J -- Harden, J W -- Ritchie, J C -- McCarty, G W -- Heckrath, G -- Kosmas, C -- Giraldez, J V -- da Silva, J R Marques -- Merckx, R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Oct 26;318(5850):626-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Physical and Regional Geography Research Group, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium. kristof.vanoost@uclouvain.be〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17962559" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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