Shortages of Plant-Essential Nutrients Threaten to Hasten Climate Change
The decreasing efficacy of terrestrial carbon storage
The biosphere is the zone of life on Earth. It encompasses every ecosystem on the planet, from the forest, and grassland to tundra and desert. It includes all sizes and complexities; the largest marine ecosystems; the entirety of the Amazon Rainforest; the smallest of microspheres containing communities of bacteria. Yet all of the 8.7 million species which inhabit our biosphere (and all those yet to be discovered) are dependent on an intricate system of energy distribution and nutrient availability. The balance of this system has become increasingly threatened over the past decades by our own doing.
Through the extraction and combustion of hydrocarbons, humans emit tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere every day, upsetting the natural balance of our world. When researchers estimate the damage we have inflicted upon our planet and its consequences, they take into account the positive impact of plants’ ability to absorb CO₂. However, only recently have researchers considered the availability of plant-essential nutrients and their influence on climate-predictive models. To predict future climate scenarios, such as by 2100, scientists take in numerous variables and use them to calculate global CO₂…
