Forests store roughly 40% of the Earth’s soil carbon. Northern forests soils are key reservoirs that help keep the carbon dioxide trees inhale and use for photosynthesis from making it back into the atmosphere. But on a warming planet, more carbon is escaping the soil than is being added by plants. In an experiment, soil respiration–the process that releases CO2–increased by 7% in the more modest warming case and by 17% in the more extreme case.
news.umich.edu/a-leaky-sink-carbon-emissions-from-forest-soil-will-likely-grow-with-rising-temperatures/