Earth Equity News

Study Finds Extra CO2 Enabling Trees to Grow Faster. By Leslie Kaufman, NYTimes, February 2, 2010. "Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found. The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard. All are growing two to four times as fast as normal, according to a study published in Tuesday's issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After controlling for other variables, scientists concluded that the change resulted largely from the increase in carbon dioxide... Geoffrey G. Parker, a co-author of the paper and an ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., said his research indicated that the local forests were adapting to the rise in carbon dioxide by absorbing more. 'My guess is that they are already sopping up some of the extra carbon,' he said. But Dr. Parker said it was unclear whether the trend could be sustained. 'We don't think this can persist for too long because other limiting factors will come into play, like water availability and soil nutrients,' he said."