Spring 2009

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Carbon 101

By Barbara McBreen

Carbon is the building block of life and found in every living thing. It’s also found in solids, gases, oceans, the atmosphere and the soil.

It’s an element in carbon dioxide, which is one of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that protects the earth like a blanket. For millions of years carbon cycled through plants, animals and the atmosphere, but the atmospheric balance changed when humans started burning fossil fuels.

Increasing greenhouse gases could cause this blanket to heat up the earth and change weather patterns. Along with the oceans, plants are the only means of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“Plants pull carbon out of the air through photosynthesis and produce glucose or simple sugars,” says Dick Schultz, professor of natural resource ecology and management. “A significant part of that sugar goes into plant material and when the plant dies and decomposes some of the carbon remains in the soil as organic matter and some is returned as carbon dioxide.”

Using plants, researchers are looking at ways to pull excess carbon out the atmosphere and store carbon in plants and the soil.