Cracking Soils Could Accelerate Climate Change

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By Elise Cutts, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: ...Researchers already knew separately that drought can enhance soil cracking, that soil cracks can enhance greenhouse gas emissions, and that climate change is predicted to make drought more intense and frequent in many arid parts of the world. “What this paper does is put all that together,” said soil scientist Kelly Caylor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the new study. It shows how drought-driven changes to the physical structure of soils—in this case, cracking—could contribute to climate change, too, he added. ...Soils are the planet’s greatest stockpile of terrestrial carbon. ...Vahedifard and his colleagues published their study in Environmental Research Letters.... 

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