Grasslands soak up carbon to slow climate change
(Credit: Jerry Schumacher, U.S. Forest Service, National Grasslands.)
Rebecca Phillips: Many people just look at grasslands and they see just some grass. ‘Oh well.’ They don’t recognize what a player it is in global climate.
You’re listening to Rebecca Phillips with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Mandan, North Dakota. Phillips conducted a 10-year study of the grasslands in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners to preserve environmentally sensitive areas. The scientific question is whether grasslands are actually helping take carbon out of Earth’s atmosphere.
Rebecca Phillips: Yes, they most certainly are. They’re taking over 2,000 pounds per acre per year out of the atmosphere, on average. That’s a tremendous natural service that these grasslands are providing us.
Phillips’ study looked at close to 1,500 grass fields, using both ground-based instruments and satellites in space.
Rebecca Phillips: They’re a little-understood commodity. They have a tremendous photosynthetic mechanism for taking carbon dioxide out of the air, putting it into the soil, mostly in the form of a dense and extensive root system.
Phillips said that from 10 to 20 percent of all carbon on land on Earth — trillions of tons — lies underneath grasslands.
Rebecca Phillips: Between the grasses and the forest, it’s the best mechanism that we know of for taking out carbon dioxide.
Our thanks today to NASA – explore, discover, understand.
Additional Teacher Resources
NASA: Grasslands Initiative
This article discusses how scientists are studying the net primary productivity of grasslands because they want to know how much carbon and energy is transferred between the atmosphere and green plants, which is an indicator of the condition of the land. Net primary productivity is also a likely indicator of the response of ecosystems to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and global climate change.
NASA: Experiments – Mission: Biomes
This online lesson plan for grades 3-8 provides information on the major biomes, including grasslands. It provides background information and two online experiments. The experiments are designed to be interactive and self correcting, allowing students to work at their own pace.
