Washington, August 24 (ANI): Summer drought combined with higher temperatures limits the positive effects of CO2 on plant growth, according to a new research.
"When you've previously seen a significantly higher plant growth at elevated CO2 concentrations, it is typically because it has been controlled studies, where only the CO2 concentration was changed. We fundamentally had the theory that you have to look at the combination of the different climate variables, since the plants in the future will be exposed to multiple changes simultaneously," explains Klaus Steenberg Larsen, who is a researcher in the Biosystems Division at Riso DTU and lead author on the scientific paper.
CLIMAITE is a Danish research center that investigates how climate change, as they probably appear in 2075, affects biological processes and ecosystems in nature.
Data from the first two years are underlying the scientific paper, and results clearly indicate that we will not get the predicted increase in plant growth in our latitudes in the future.
"The results in the paper cover the years 2006-2007, and the experiment will run until 2014. But it takes time to gather the results from the 20-30 people who interpret and analyze the results from the many types of equipment that are set up. However, we can clearly see that especially the drying of the soil has a significant negative effect on nitrogen production - and thus on the possible plant growth - even in those areas that are exposed to increased CO2 and warming."
Results from field trials as these are important for future policy decisions and actions to be taken to counteract or directly prevent climate change in the future.
The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology. (ANI)
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