Tree bark microbes for climate management

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By Vincent Gauci, Science. 

Excerpt: For decades, soil was thought to be the only surface that exchanges trace gases with the atmosphere...soil emits gas when it is saturated with water and absorbs gas when it is not saturated. Tree bark biogeochemistry (life-mediated chemical cycling and exchange between air, water, and land) has been almost completely ignored, despite bark having a global surface area of ~143 million km2, almost as large as the global land surface... Leung et al. report that bark microbes process methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, showing that bark is an important component of global trace gas dynamics. ...Over a 100-year period, methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide trap 27.9, 12.8, and 3 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, respectively. Atmospheric methane is responsible for 0.5°C of the global rise in temperature observed since the preindustrial period.... 

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