The economic value of grassland species for carbon storage

Published by Ecoss on

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Ecoss research demonstrated that grasslands with more diverse plant species pull down and store more carbon per acre: in this illustration, the same plot of soil from a diverse vs.  depauperate grassland shows more belowground investment in deeper roots and denser storage of carbon in a diverse array of plants.  Ecoss quantified this difference in a way that predicts the carbon storage capacity of whole landscapes, a large step toward empowering land managers to make decisions based on the climate effects of conserving biodiversity.

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A trio of illustrated panels depicts the soil microbial communities in three treatments of a long-term warming experiment north of Flagstaff, Arizona. The panels are labeled in gray text, left to right: control, short-term warming, long-term warming. The control treatment, far left, depicts bacteria, protists, and other microorganisms identified by sequencing the soil’s metagenome in yellow, orange, green, and blue, along with chains of available nutrients. Soil depicted in the center panel, which has undergone short-term warming, shows an increased abundance and diversity of microbes, some of which are growing, incorporating nutrients, and respiring carbon dioxide. The soil that has undergone long-term warming, imagined in the panel on the right, shows fewer microbial species and competitive relationships that are developing for control of the scarcer nutrients.

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