Mitigating global warming by improving terrestrial biotic carbon flux

摘要

There is global growing concern over increasing atmospheric CO2, making Earth warmer and increasing frequency of extreme weather effects. Global carbons are pooled in five carbon pools and terrestrial carbon pool - a major pool - has a potential function to dampen increasing atmospheric concentration. The pedospheric mesofauna promote carbon sequestration by redistributing carbon through soil profile. A study of selected reclaimed overburden dumps, of different age, of mine spoils and a natural forest floor pedosphere ecosystem was carried out in Jharkhand. Quadrates of lm x lm x 0.05m were selected and soil corers were used for collection of samples for biotic and abiotic factors. Field data were analyzed using PAST software. We observed that thereis a higher amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in newly reclaimed over burden dumps (OBDs) than in older OBDs and natural forest, SOC and nitrogen are significantly correlated with soil mesofauna, there is significant positive correlation between aboveground mesofauna and below ground mesofauna and there is higher soil mesofauna /kg in older reclaimed OBD and natural forest ecosystem. These results are indicative that there is a detrimental relationship between soil mesofauna and carbon sequestration- as there is lowering of SOC and soil organic matter/kg in older OBDs and forest.