A pileup of ancient logs nearly as big as Manhattan is trapping millions of tons of carbon in northern Canada — and much of that stored material could be released into the atmosphere due to climate change, according to a recent study.
The fallen, jumbled-up wood has in some cases been sitting for more than a millennium, protected from decay by the deep freeze and the tight packing of the logs, which are carried northward by the Mackenzie River above the Arctic Circle.
Not all carbon stores are resilient to rising temperatures, though, and some may break down quickly when pushed too hard. Thawing permafrost starts melting slowly, then melts very rapidly, for example, leading to fears of massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere and a problem that builds on itself.
The profusion of wood may be storing about 3.4 million tons of carbon, according to Sendrowski’s research work, which was published in the. It sought to map the logjam and estimate its weight and carbon content for the first time, using a mixture of drone and satellite photography and artificial intelligence to estimate the visible amount of wood. That’s equivalent to the emissions of 2.5 million cars for a year, she said.
Live trees that have been rooted in the permafrost may increasingly tumble into rivers as the ground thaws underneath them. And warmer temperatures may accelerate decay as the logs rub against each other and shed more material and float off into the open sea, where they will decay more quickly than if they remain trapped in the logjam, Sendrowski said.Forests are the crucial carbon sink on land.
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