Source: NCSU, 7/9/21


Two factors that play a key role in climate change – increased climate warming and elevated ozone levels – appear to have detrimental effects on soybean plant roots, their relationship with symbiotic microorganisms in the soil and the ways the plants sequester carbon.

The results, published in the July 9 edition of Science Advances, show few changes to the plant shoots aboveground but some distressing results underground, including the increased inability to hold carbon that instead gets released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

North Carolina State University researchers examined the interplay of warming and increased ozone levels with certain important underground organisms – arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) – that promote chemical interactions that hold carbon in the ground by preventing the decomposition of soil organic matter, thereby halting the escape of carbon from the decomposing material.

For more of this story, click here.