0


土地的变化:环境压力与陆地生物圈的碳储存能力

Changes in the Land: Environmental Stresses and the Terrestrial Biosphere’s Capacity to Store Carbon
课程网址: http://videolectures.net/mitworld_melillo_cles/  
主讲教师: Melillo Jerry M
开课单位: 生态系统中心
开课时间: 2013-03-28
课程语种: 英语
中文简介:
杰瑞·梅利洛承担着巨大的知识负担。他研究了全球变暖背后的力量,并试图预测它们将如何塑造地球的未来。Melillo的研究涉及世界不同地区的小型和大型研究,并使他能够对二氧化碳释放到大气中或储存在陆地生态系统中的方式形成真正的全球图景。Melillo在马萨诸塞州森林的研究强调了碳循环中一个鲜为人知的部分:如果植物能获得更多的氮,它们就会生长得更好,并且趋向于积累更多的碳——减少释放到大气中的量。因此,帮助减少大气二氧化碳的一种方法是向树木提供氮。但这只在一定程度上起作用,因为化肥等来源的过多氮会冲出土壤并进入供水系统。梅利洛提出的更大的情况是严峻的:人类的土地利用——特别是森林转化为农业用地——代表着地球储存碳的能力不可逆转的丧失。他指出了一个具有惊人破坏性的项目:中国2005年在婆罗洲投资70亿美元,用于清除热带森林,以建立棕榈树种植园,生产生物燃料。婆罗洲一半的森林已经消失。巴西正在开展类似的企业,清理森林和草原,为大规模的大豆种植园(生物柴油燃料)让路。梅利洛指出了破坏二氧化碳储存能力的悖论,以养活将产生更多二氧化碳的经济体。他说:“如果这种活动继续下去,陆地上碳储存的前景就不乐观了。”他还指出,随着世界变暖,我们必须应对更频繁的森林火灾,以及寒冷地区的巨大碳池,这些碳将随着冻土的融化和分解释放到大气中。“我看着一个云密布的水晶球,”梅利洛总结道。“我们对全球碳循环的认识不完整,我们目前的管理方法不符合人类的利益。”
课程简介: Jerry Melillo bears a formidable burden of knowledge. He studies the forces behind global warming, and attempts to predict how they will shape the future of the planet. Melillo’s research involves both small-scale and large-scale studies, in different regions of the world, and allows him to form a truly global picture of the ways carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, or stored within terrestrial ecosystems. Melillo’s research in Massachusetts forests has highlighted a little known piece of the carbon cycle: If more nitrogen becomes available to plants, they grow better, and tend to accumulate more carbon-- reducing the amount released to the atmosphere. So one way of helping reduce atmospheric CO2 is feeding trees with nitrogen. But this works only to a point, since too much nitrogen, from such sources as fertilizers, washes out of the soil and into water supplies. The bigger picture Melillo presents is grim: human land use -- specifically the conversion of forests into agricultural land -- represents an irreversible loss of the capacity of the planet to store carbon. He points to an astonishingly destructive project: China’s $7 billion dollar investment in Borneo in 2005 to clear tropical forests in order to create palm tree plantations to produce biofuel. Half of Borneo’s forests are already gone. Comparable enterprises are underway in Brazil, clearing forest and savannah to make way for massive soy bean plantations -- for biodiesel fuel. Melillo points to the paradox of destroying carbon dioxide storing capacity, to feed economies that will produce more carbon dioxide. “The prospects for carbon storage on land, if this activity continues -- it’s not a pretty picture,” he says. He also points out that as the world warms up, we must contend with more frequent forest fires, as well as the vast pool of carbon lying in cold regions, which will be released into the atmosphere as frozen soil thaws and decomposes. “I look into a very clouded crystal ball,” concludes Melillo. “Our knowledge of the global carbon cycle is incomplete and our current approach of managing it is not in the interests of humankind.”
关 键 词: 陆地生态系统; 二氧化碳; 储存碳; 全球碳循环
课程来源: 视频讲座网
最后编审: 2020-05-22:吴雨秋(课程编辑志愿者)
阅读次数: 87