Soils in Northern United States forests store up to 50 percent of the ecosystem’s total carbon and will release their stores more easily when trees are clear-cut, according to a study in Soil Science reported on by UPI.
Clear-cutting, more than the selective harvesting approach employed by many logging operations, weakens carbon dioxide’s ability to bond to the mineral pools in forest soil, the study says. A weak bond means the carbon can escape.
"Clear-cutting forests has an effect of mobilizing the carbon, making it more likely to leave the soil and end up in the atmosphere," Andrew Friedland, a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth University and lead author of the study, told UPI.
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