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0 pointsatoav6y ago0 comments

Into the plant? Btw. you can easily test this yourself in a closed glas sphere.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

PeterisP6y ago· 2 in thread

Exactly, it goes into the plant, and is then released as the plant decomposes - so in a stable rainforest, where the total plant mass isn't increasing, the new plants growing (creating O2 and absorbing CO2) is fully balanced by old plants decomposing or burning (absorbing O2 and creating CO2); so there's no net creation of O2.

varjag6y ago

That would be true only if you always burn 100% of biomass, which doesn't happen. Carbon gets sequestered into soil, and partly consumed by insects and animals up the food chain.

All carbon in your body was once sequestered by plants.

PeterisP6y ago

The point is that in a stable rainforest the amount of biomass isn't growing, so you obviously do burn/decompose 100% of the newly created biomass - otherwise the amount of biomass would have grown. Carbon gets sequestered into the soil in cases where soil is being enriched and is "growing in size" (for example, when a previously barren place gets forested) but in a stable, centuries-old rainforest the soil amount really isn't increasing - so as much as gets sequestered, gets released by decomposition.

As the total biomass of insects isn't growing, the carbon they consume is balanced by the carbon released by decomposition of (otherwise) unconsumed insects; the same applies for animals up the food chain - if at the end of 2019 the total weight of insects and animals in the Amazon is not larger than at the end of 1919, then zero carbon has been sequestered in these insects and animals over a hundred years.

nearbuy6y ago

I meant overall in the long term, in response to EB66 saying BurningFrog is wrong.

The plants can't be net collecting carbon each year unless the Amazon contains more and more plant matter each year.

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