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A really old and unmistakably well - preserved log buried almost 4,000 years ago provides fundamental evidence to support a simple-minded and in force way of interlock away carbon to cut down greenhouse accelerator pedal emissions — burying dead trees in gargantuan graveyards — scientist say .
In a paper release Sept. 26 in the journalScience , research worker describe the discovery of a 3,775 - yr - honest-to-goodness sign in Saint - Pie , Quebec , Canada . This soapbox was unearthed during a 2013 project that aim to identify sites for so - call wood vaults , which entomb woody biomass under a layer of clay soil to prevent reentry of carbon to the atmosphere .
The 3,775-year-old log had barely lost any of its carbon content, scientists discover.
Wood curvet is a bod of biologic atomic number 6 sequestration — utilizing the power of living things to charm carbon . Lead authorNing Zeng , a climate scientist at the University of Maryland who has a troupe aiming to commercialize the technology , first bring out inquiry on burying Sir Henry Wood to sequestrate atomic number 6 in a2008 newspaper .
The logarithm , " is a single data level , " Zeng told Live Science . " But it tells you : if you bury wood under these conditions , it ’s give-up the ghost to work . So it ’s a very decisive data percentage point . It ’s really immediately implementable . "
The log , which belong to an Eastern red-faced true cedar ( Juniperus virginiana ) , was discovered beneath 6.5 feet ( 2 meters ) of puritanical clay near the border of a creek bed .
The 3,775-year-old log had barely lost any of its carbon content, scientists discover.
" It ’s driftwood . It just got dumped there — perchance during a implosion therapy event , " Zeng said .
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The cadaver sediment preserve the wood by suppressing the growing of any microorganisms that might have facilitated its decay — piffling O is able to penetrate the dim , piddle - saturate clay particles .
The source add that the lignin and holocellulose ( the master components of wood ) of the log are already resistant to decay — though had the log stay on above priming , fungi and other organisms would have made comparatively quick work of it . Because of the lack of O in the environs where the logarithm was maintain , only anaerobiotic bacterium could outlive .
These bacteria would only have been capable to digest the tabu layer of holocellulose , a saccharide find in plants . They can not digest lignin — a polymer that gives plants their rigidity — and would have been improbable to penetrate the privileged layers of Sir Henry Joseph Wood .
" The cell structure is almost intact , " Zeng said .
Carbon go out established that the logarithm had been buried for nearly four millennium . Infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy showed it had retain the majority of the carbon it drew from the atmospheric state during its lifetime .
accord to the newspaper , the log hold in around 5 % less atomic number 6 than a advanced log harvested from the same species of tree diagram , though the dissent environments in which modern and ancient trees grew may affect that amount .
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The determination are trial impression of conception for Natalie Wood vaulting , the scientist said . While plant life can imbibe up atmospheric atomic number 6 — removing billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually — much of it is quickly returned to the atmosphere when plant crumble or are burned . The author believe that large - scale of measurement burial of trees could change that — potentially compensating for nearly a third of our annual fossil fuel emissions .
They argue that wastefulness wood from urban Tree and manage forests could be divert to forest vaults with proportional relaxation and price efficiency . Lucius Clay filth are widespread , Zeng say , and sites could be repurposed for USDA or solar farming once the Sir Henry Joseph Wood is swallow .
Zeng has already completed several pilot task through his companyCarbon Lockdown . Other company are leveraging the technology as well — a companypartially funded by Bill Gates is swallow up wood in the Nevada desert . And researchershave proposedburying tight - growing plants such as grasses to sequester carbon as well .
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