Grasslands: Climate Change’s Unsuspecting Heroes
- Media Manager
- Jul 21, 2020
- 1 min read
National Environmental Treasure
Written By: Amanda Tracey
Land Lines, the Nature Conservancy of Canada blog
Published: July 22nd, 2020
Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. Carbon makes up everything we do, everything we eat, and it even makes us up. Carbon is stored in different reservoirs, which broadly include land, water and the atmosphere. Carbon cycles from one reservoir to another. When you remove carbon from one reservoir, it must find its way to another reservoir. For example, the burning of fossil fuels on land results in more carbon moving from land into the atmosphere. Sometimes this cycling of carbon can have other impacts when it flows between reservoirs. For instance, rising atmospheric temperatures can be linked to increased carbon in the atmosphere reservoir.
Carbon sinks are any natural reservoir that stores more carbon than it produces. Plants are one of the key sinks (storage units) for carbon on Earth. Plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then use that carbon dioxide and energy from the sun to create sugars. Plants use these sugars themselves, or other organisms can consume them later by eating the plants.
