https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Earth's largest mass extinction occurred about 252 million years ago, wiping out the majority of marine and terrestrial life, disrupting the global carbon cycle for several hundred thousand years, and earning the title "the Great Dying." Global warming, changing temperature gradients, shifts in nutrient cycling, and oxygen depletion wiped out 81% of all marine life at the time. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-algae-life-outlast-extinction.html Ecology Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:50:01 EST news682267796 A Peking University research team led by Wang Heyuan and Wang Kai at the Institute for Carbon Neutrality (ICN) used AI models to determine that the global land carbon sink has drastically shrunk due to an abrupt and extreme jump in global temperature. Their study, "AI-tracked halving of global land carbon sink in 2024," was published in Science Bulletin. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-global-carbon-halved-ai.html Earth Sciences Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:51:03 EST news681493861 A deeper look into carbon flux is now possible—thanks to a deep pool of scientific collaboration. And for once, the spotlight is on Asia. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-asia-global-carbon-conversation.html Earth Sciences Thu, 21 Aug 2025 04:00:01 EDT news674907842 NISAR will help researchers explore how changes in Earth's forest and wetland ecosystems are affecting the global carbon cycle and influencing climate change. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-nasa-isro-radar-mission-dynamic-view.html Earth Sciences Fri, 27 Oct 2023 13:40:06 EDT news617632797 In a large-scale study with almost 400 partners, researchers worldwide have collected data on tree species, to which scientists from Bayreuth have contributed their knowledge about the Kilimanjaro region. The study, which has now been published in the journal Nature Plants, improves our understanding of the different leaf types of trees and thus enables us to draw conclusions about ecosystems and the CO2 cycle. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-importance-tree-carbon-dioxide-storage.html Ecology Tue, 24 Oct 2023 11:31:44 EDT news617365901 Plants take in CO2 to grow. They extract it from the atmosphere and use it to build organic compounds by means of photosynthesis and water. Terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed an average of about 32 percent of CO2 emissions caused by human activity over the last six decades. Whether and to what extent terrestrial vegetation can continue to function as a carbon sink in a changing climate is a key question in climate science and is of vital political relevance. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-droughts-carbon-dioxide-uptake-tropics.html Earth Sciences Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:21:25 EDT news604833674 Global fires have widespread impacts on the global carbon cycle and atmospheric environment with immediate direct carbon emissions. Fire carbon emission has substantial spatiotemporal variabilities and contributes to the dynamics of global CO2 distributions and variances. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-global-carbon-emissions-contribute-atmospheric.html Earth Sciences Mon, 20 Mar 2023 10:36:03 EDT news598527361 Forests hold a vast amount of Earth's terrestrial carbon and play an important role in offsetting anthropogenic emissions of fossil fuels. Since 2015, the world's tropical forests can be observed regularly at an unprecedented six to 12 day interval thanks to the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-cube-forest-loss-amazon.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 07 Mar 2023 12:35:04 EST news597414902 In a new journal article, EPFL professor Tom Battin reviews our current understanding of carbon fluxes in the world's river networks. He demonstrates their central role in the global carbon cycle and argues for the creation of a global River Observation System. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-rivers-global-carbon.html Earth Sciences Thu, 19 Jan 2023 08:39:04 EST news593339941 Forests contribute an enormous carbon flux to terrestrial ecosystems. Thus, accurate estimation and prediction of forest dynamics both play an important role in understanding the carbon cycle in the background of global change. Process-based ecological models have been often considered effective tools for evaluating forest dynamics at multiple scales. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-individual-tree-based-multiscale-forest-carbon.html Ecology Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:22:02 EST news589116121 Soil respiration is fundamental in terrestrial ecosystems, where plants and microbes dominate the production of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. The scientific understanding of the processes underpinning soil respiration remains incomplete, limiting our ability to accurately predict how the global carbon cycle will respond to the changing climate. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-paired-gas-biogeochemical-tracer.html Earth Sciences Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:56:10 EDT news569753766 "Streams to the river, river to the sea." If only it were that simple. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-reveals-inland-coastal-waterways-climate.html Environment Wed, 16 Mar 2022 12:00:02 EDT news566650370 The interplay between the terrestrial carbon cycle and emissions of carbon dioxide from streams and rivers into the atmosphere is at the center of a new Yale School of the Environment-led study aimed at calculating the amount for the global carbon emissions budget. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-aims-terrestrial-carbon-role-river.html Environment Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:51:00 EDT news566578257 This study is led by Dr. Bin He (College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University) and Dr. Wenping Yuan (School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University). Terrestrial ecosystem, as a major carbon sink, plays an important role in regulating the global carbon cycle and atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio. Traditionally, atmospheric temperature or land water availability have been considered as the two dominant drivers of interannual variability of global terrestrial carbon sink. In 2019, Wenping Yuan's group observed an apparent shift in global vegetation growth from greening to browning in the 1990s, and attributed this shift to the sharp increase in vapor pressure deficit (VPD). Inspired by this study, Bin He proposed that VPD should regulate the global terrestrial carbon cycle to a significant extent, which has been ignored by previous studies. "When I found the strong correlation between VPD and atmospheric CO2 growth rate, and the latter is an integrated measurement of global land carbon sink, I realized this finding may bring a completely new research objective in the field of global carbon cycle and climate change" Bin He says. https://phys.org/news/2021-10-underestimated-impact-vapor-pressure-deficit.html Earth Sciences Mon, 25 Oct 2021 11:59:17 EDT news554381955 An ecologist from RUDN University together with colleagues from 14 countries compared three methods for estimating ecosystem transpiration in a study. In the first ever research with such a comprehensive data-set, the team used land-atmosphere water vapor flux data of collected at 251 locations all over the planet, from Australia to Greenland. The outcome of the research help to understand the role of plants in the global water and carbon cycles in the current predicament of global warming. The results of the study were published in the December 2020 issue of the journal Global Change Biology. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-ecologists-vegetation-transpiration-global-network.html Earth Sciences Thu, 28 Jan 2021 11:24:59 EST news531055495 The global spread of vast forest plantations and agricultural monocultures are turning once diverse landscapes into areas of land supporting single plant species, with profound implications for our terrestrial water cycle, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-intensive-monoculture-peril.html Environment Tue, 22 Sep 2020 08:33:25 EDT news519982400 A better understanding of terrestrial flux dynamics will come from elucidating the integrated effects of climate and vegetation constraints on gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), according to Dr. Shutao Chen, Associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. https://phys.org/news/2019-06-scientists-climate-vegetation-drivers-terrestrial.html Environment Fri, 14 Jun 2019 10:20:01 EDT news479725970 Plants absorb some of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But increasing deforestation and other changes in land use will reduce the CO2 absorption capacity of these areas in the future. This is what a study by climate researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) suggests. Their results are now published in Environmental Research Letters. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-expansion-agricultural-co2-absorption.html Environment Fri, 06 Jul 2018 06:30:01 EDT news450077108 An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of York, has discovered a set of enzymes found in fungi that are capable of breaking down one of the main components of wood. The enzymes could now potentially be used to sustainably convert wood biomass into valuable chemical commodities such as biofuels. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-fungal-enzymes-secret-renewable-energy.html Biochemistry Fri, 16 Feb 2018 09:23:30 EST news437995399 University of Sydney and NASA researchers have developed a revolutionary new technique to image plant photosynthesis using satellite-based remote-sensing, with potential applications in climate change monitoring. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-photosynthesis-space.html Environment Thu, 12 Oct 2017 14:00:16 EDT news427034298 The conversion of forests, grasslands, shrublands and wetlands to cropland over the course of three centuries profoundly changed the surface of the Earth and the carbon cycle of the terrestrial ecosystem in Northeast China. https://phys.org/news/2014-09-carbon-emissions-triggered-years-cropland.html Environment Tue, 30 Sep 2014 02:41:36 EDT news331263688 Scientists know that wildland fire emissions play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and that its principal component – carbon dioxide – is a primary driver of climate change. But predicting and quantifying the effects of potential future emissions is a difficult process requiring the integration of complex interactions of climate, fire, and vegetation. The current state of knowledge, critical knowledge gaps, and importance of fire emissions for global climate and terrestrial carbon cycling is the focus of nine science syntheses published in a special issue in the Forest Ecology and Management journal titled, Wildland Fire Emissions, Carbon, and Climate: Science Overview and Knowledge Needs. https://phys.org/news/2014-06-state-wildland-emissions-carbon-climate.html Environment Thu, 05 Jun 2014 12:21:16 EDT news321189635 (Phys.org) —Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may get the lion's share of attention in climate change discussions, but the biggest repository of carbon is actually underfoot: soils store an estimated 2.5 trillion tons of carbon in the form of organic matter. https://phys.org/news/2014-03-neutrons-simulations-soil-carbon.html Environment Mon, 31 Mar 2014 08:00:02 EDT news315470455 When the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises, the Earth not only heats up, but extreme weather events, such as lengthy droughts, heat waves, heavy rain and violent storms, may become more frequent. Whether these extreme climate events result in the release of more CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems and thus reinforce climate change has been one of the major unanswered questions in climate research. It has now been addressed by an international team of researchers working with Markus Reichstein, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. They have discovered that terrestrial ecosystems absorb approximately 11 billion tons less carbon dioxide every year as the result of the extreme climate events than they could if the events did not occur. That is equivalent to approximately a third of global CO2 emissions per year. https://phys.org/news/2013-08-extreme-weather-events-fuel-climate.html Earth Sciences Wed, 14 Aug 2013 13:00:01 EDT news295672903 Scientists from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and University of California, Berkeley have demonstrated that plants and soils could release large amounts of carbon dioxide as global climate warms. This finding contrasts with the expectation that plants and soils will absorb carbon dioxide and is important because that additional carbon release from land surface could be a potent positive feedback that exacerbates climate warming. https://phys.org/news/2012-11-soils-exacerbate-climate-global.html Environment Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:10:31 EST news272034577 (Phys.org)—A US scientist has proposed that a new planetary boundary be used to analyze the effects of human activities on the planet. He warns that there are definite biophysical limits to growth in human population, economies and consumption, and that limits in some variables might already have been reached. https://phys.org/news/2012-09-planetary-boundary-effects-human.html Environment Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:29:42 EDT news267424171 Two recent international studies are poised to change the way scientists view the crucial relationship between Earth's climate and the carbon cycle. These reports explore the global photosynthesis and respiration rates -- the planet's deep "breaths" of carbon dioxide, in and out -- and researchers say that the new findings will be used to update and improve upon traditional models that couple together climate and carbon. https://phys.org/news/2010-07-earth-carbon-terrestrial-ecosystems.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:00:02 EDT news197545620 Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) losses from tile drains are an underquantified portion of the terrestrial carbon cycle. This is particularly important in the eastern corn belt where tile drainage dominates the agricultural landscape. Specific land management practices, such as manure application, can play a large role in the export of DOC as soluble organic carbon is applied to or injected into the soil surface. As animal agriculture intensifies in the upper Midwest, measuring DOC exported through tile drains is important when evaluating carbon budgets and carbon sequestration potential. https://phys.org/news/2009-06-agricultural-watersheds-carbon-losses.html Environment Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:51:03 EDT news164639559