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John LaRose Jr. John LaRose Jr.
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Soils in old-growth treetops can store more carbon than soils under our feet

AGU press contact: Rebecca Dzombak, +1 (202) 777-7492, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours) Contact information for the researchers: Peyton Smith, Texas A&M University, peyton.smith@ag.tamu.edu (UTC-6 hours) Hannah Connuck, Franklin and Marshall College, hconnuck@gmail.com (UTC-4 hours) NEW ORLEANS—New research reveals a previously underappreciated way old-growth forests have been recycling and storing carbon: treetop soils. Branches in forest canopies can hold caches of soil that may store substantially more carbon than soils on the ground beneath them, and scientists are just beginning to understand how much carbon canopy soils — which exist on every continent except Antarctica — could store. The new research on these unique soils, being presented on Wednesday, 15 December at 5:00 p.m. CST at AGU Fall Meeting 2021, marks the first attempt to quantify carbon capture by canopy soils. The work highlights another way old-growth forests are rich, complex ecosystems that cannot be quickly replaced by replanting forests. Tree branches collect fallen tree leaves and other organic material over hundreds of years, like the ground does. On top of the branches, the plant litter decomposes as it accumulates, forming a carbon-rich layer that can be several inches thick. The researchers climbed up into the rainforest canopy in Costa Rica, instruments in hand, to find out just how much carbon canopy soils can contain. Active carbon, a short-term storage pool of organic carbon, was three times higher in canopy soil compared to soils underfoot, the researchers found. “We knew these would be really organic-rich soils, but we didn’t expect the extremely large amount of carbon compared to mineral soils,” said Hannah Connuck, an undergraduate researcher at Franklin and Marshall College who will be presenting the study results.   The researchers are still calculating the total concentration of organic carbon at their research site, but other research has found canopy soils to have up to 10 times higher concentrations of or...

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