Northern peatlands a misunderstood player in climate change
2011-03-16
(Press-News.org) (Edmonton) University of Alberta researchers have determined that the influence of northern peatlands on the prehistorical record of climate change has been over estimated, but the vast northern wetlands must still be watched closely as the planet grapples with its current global warming trend.
Northern peatlands, which are a boggy mixture of dead organic material and water, cover more than four million square kilometers. The largest northern peatlands occur in the subarctic regions of Canada and Russia. As peatlands grow they sequester carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, as old peat is buried and begins to decompose it emits large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Alberto Reyes and Colin Cooke were PhD students in the U of A's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences when they began their research into the response of northern peatlands to climate change.
They began their research by studying radiocarbon dates of ancient peatlands to examine how peatlands first colonized northern regions at the end of the last ice age, a period of rapid global warming. Using this technique, they compared the expansion of northern peatlands to ice-core records of past climate, including carbon dioxide and methane.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane rose dramatically 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. In the past, scientists had suggested that northern peatlands were a large, if not the principle, source of the dramatic increase in atmospheric methane.
But the U of A team revealed that the peatlands did not colonize the north until 500-1000 years after the abrupt increases in atmospheric methane. These results show that other methane sources, such as tropical wetlands, were the likely drivers of the initial rises in methane levels at the end of the last ice age.
The research by Reyes and Cooke points to the miscalculation of the role of northern peatlands and wetlands in the methane rise 10,000 years ago as an example of how complex and easily these huge areas of the planet can be misunderstood. The researchers say future work will focus on the northern peatlands as nature's own carbon-capture mechanism and on their flipside role an emitter of carbon in the form of methane.
INFORMATION:
The research was published online last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2011-03-16
A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grass breeder has rediscovered a forage grass that seems just right for today's intensive rotational grazing.
A farmer's report of an unusual forage grass led Michael Casler, an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) geneticist at the agency's U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wis., to identify the grass as meadow fescue. Meadow fescue has been long forgotten, although it was popular after being introduced about 50 to 60 years before tall fescue.
ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
Casler ...
2011-03-16
WASHINGTON, March 15—In the latest twist on optical knots, New York University (NYU) physicists have discovered a new method to create extended and knotted optical traps in three dimensions. This method, which the NYU scientists describe in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, produces "bright" knots, where the maximum of the light intensity traces out a knotted trajectory in space, for the first time allowing microscopic objects to be trapped along the path of the knot. The method may even, one day, help enable fusion energy as a practical power ...
2011-03-16
Reliant Technology, an EMC and IBM storage supplier, is proud to offer the IBM EXP810 storage upgrades for the IBM DS4000 series, including the IBM DS4800, the IBM DS4700, IBM FastT storage, the IBM DS4500, the IBM DS4300 and DS5020 storage systems, giving customers an affordable option for growth. Reliant Technology offers quality refurbished storage and SAN Hardware from IBM, EMC, NetApp Brocade, Data Domain, and HDS.
The IBM EXP810, otherwise known as an IBM expansion shelf or disk tray, is a 16 slot disk enclosure that allows IBM storage controllers to be upgraded ...
2011-03-16
The researchers are from the National Institutes of Health, collaborating with labs at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego. The finding is published in the March 10 edition of Science Express.
"This is an important step forward — it was impossible until recently to know how this type of receptor is switched on by chemical signals like a tiny machine," said Dr. Kenneth A. Jacobson, chief of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry in NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and an author on the ...
2011-03-16
The exhaustive audit covered the period September 1, 2010 through February 28, 2011 and was performed by an independent accounting and auditing firm.
Completion of the SAS 70 Type II examination indicates that Corporate Colocation Inc. processes, procedures and controls have been formally evaluated and tested by an independent accounting and auditing firm. The examination included the company's controls related to: Physical Security, Environmental Security and Network Monitoring.
SAS 70 is designated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an acceptable ...
2011-03-16
A new laser technique has demonstrated that it can measure the interactions between proteins tangled in a cell's membrane and a variety of other biological molecules. These extremely difficult measurements can aid the process of drug discovery.
Scientists estimate that about 30 percent of the 7,000 proteins in a human cell reside in the cell's membrane and that these membrane proteins initiate 60 to 70 percent of the signals that control the operation of the cell's molecular machinery. As a result, about half of the drugs currently on the market target membrane proteins.
Despite ...
2011-03-16
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to improve the performance of ferroelectric materials, which have the potential to make memory devices with more storage capacity than magnetic hard drives and faster write speed and longer lifetimes than flash memory.
In ferroelectric memory the direction of molecules' electrical polarization serves as a 0 or a 1 bit. An electric field is used to flip the polarization, which is how data is stored.
With his colleagues at U-M and collaborators from Cornell University, Penn State ...
2011-03-16
DETROIT — Approximately two million adults in the United States meet criteria for pathological gambling, and another four to six million are considered problem gamblers, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. A study by researchers at Wayne State University reveals that gambling addiction treatment is not one-size-fits-all, but it is difficult to predict which style of treatment is best for the various forms of gambling addiction.
According to David M. Ledgerwood, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University, ...
2011-03-16
A model of health care developed by a Queen's University doctor should be studied and copied as a way to reform health care in the U.S.
The U.S. is facing a problem of adding 40 million people to its health care system if President Obama's health care reforms are passed and Ontario's Family Health Team Model (FHT) could help ease the burden.
"What we are saying is that Ontario's FHT model is a very effective and efficient way of providing health care," says Walter Rosser, professor in the Department of Family Medicine. "It should be part of the solution for health system ...
2011-03-16
Smart Software, Inc., provider of industry-leading demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization solutions, today announced that Metro-North Railroad (MNR) has purchased Smart's flagship product, SmartForecasts, as part of a company-wide service improvement and inventory reduction program. MNR, the nation's second largest commuter railroad, serves 275,000 passengers each weekday in the New York City metropolitan area, operating 1,193 engines and rail cars over 765 miles of track. It will use SmartForecasts to reduce inventory stocking levels for its 40,000 active ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Northern peatlands a misunderstood player in climate change
