Huge-scale ecological engineering around the edges of one of the world's largest and driest deserts has turned it into a carbon sink that absorbs more CO2 than it emits, research suggests.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58909207

Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world’s largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals.

“We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification,” study co-author Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a senior research scientist in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science in an email.

  • CanadaPlusEnglish
    4·
    22 hours ago

    … How do they grow with no water?

    Edit: Ah, the “around” bit means the edges. This is more to stop it from spreading.

    I suppose irrigated tree farming could be used to fix carbon, too, although I’m not sure how it stacks up relative to other approaches, and you’d need abundant fresh water near a desert.