Plantation-associated drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands has accelerated in recent years. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, leading to elevated decomposition rates and net soil carbon losses. Empirical studies indicate positive relationships between long-term water table (WT) depth and soil carbon loss rate in peatlands. These correlations potentially enable using WT depth as a proxy for soil carbon losses from peatland plantations. Here, we compile data from published research assessing WT depth and carbon balance in tropical plantations on peat.

Further degradation of Indonesia's forests could impact the national economy and the lives of millions, according to a new UN study titled "Forest Ecosystem Valuation Study: Indonesia".

Researchers are racing to determine whether forests will continue to act as a brake on climate change by soaking up more carbon.

There has been extensive debate about whether the sustainable use of forests (forest management aimed at producing a sustainable yield of timber or other products) results in superior climate outcomes to conservation (maintenance or enhancement of conservation values without commercial harvesting). Most of the relevant research has relied on consequential life-cycle assessment (LCA), with the results tending to show that sustainable use has lower net greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions than conservation in the long term.

This compendium is released on the target year of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While there has been remarkable progress on the MDGs, such as halving the

European Union countries need to significantly increase investments in carbon capture and storage and show much greater urgency and determination to develop and deploy the technology, according to a new report by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science and the Gran

Diatoms are responsible for ~40% of marine primary productivity, fuelling the oceanic carbon cycle and contributing to natural carbon sequestration in the deep ocean. Diatoms rely on energetically expensive carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) to fix carbon efficiently at modern levels of CO2. How diatoms may respond over the short and long term to rising atmospheric CO2 remains an open question.

Studies on measuring CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes from five agroforestry systems viz., teak, jatropha, pongamia, simaruba and leucaena were conducted in semi-arid alfisols. This study gives an idea of successive potential values of GHGs in agroforestry systems to compare with carbon sequesteration abilities of these systems.

Riverine export of particulate organic carbon (POC) to the ocean affects the atmospheric carbon inventory over a broad range of timescales. On geological timescales, the balance between sequestration of POC from the terrestrial biosphere and oxidation of rock-derived (petrogenic) organic carbon sets the magnitude of the atmospheric carbon and oxygen reservoirs. Over shorter timescales, variations in the rate of exchange between carbon reservoirs, such as soils and marine sediments, also modulate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

LIKE in other countries, stakeholders, who met at the just concluded 7th Climate Change Summit, organised by the Lagos State government has called for a need to create a Green Fund Initiative for t

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