Читать книгу Climate Change For Dummies - Elizabeth May - Страница 47

Soil also stores carbon. Plants draw in carbon dioxide and break it down into carbon, breathing the leftover oxygen into the atmosphere. The carbon makes its way into the soil through the plants’ root systems or when the plant dies. See Figure 2-5 for a diagram showing how soil and trees exchange carbon dioxide with the air.

In this plant-soil relationship, most of the carbon is stored close to the top of the soil. Tilling the soil (mixing it up) exposes the carbon in the ground to the oxygen in the air, and these two elements immediately join to form carbon dioxide.

Altogether, vegetation and soil store about a billion metric tons of carbon every year, and another 1.6 billion metric tons move in and out between the land and the air. So far, the plants, animals and soil have packed away 3.3 billion metric tons.