More CO2 stimulates wetlands

http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-co2-stimulates-wetlands.html

"The team conducted their study for two years (2006 – 2007), during which they focused on the role that organic matter, both growing and decaying, plays on soil elevation in wetlands and the effect CO2 has on this process. Coastal wetlands must build upward through the accumulation of mineral and organic matter to maintain a constant elevation relative to water levels; otherwise, they will drown and disappear. ... "Our findings show that elevated CO2 stimulates plant productivity, particularly below ground, thereby boosting marsh surface elevation," said Adam Langley, the paper's lead author. Patrick Megonigal, the paper's corresponding author, added "We found that by stimulating root growth, thus raising a marsh's soil elevation, elevated CO2 may also increase the capacity for coastal wetlands to tolerate relative rises in sea level." Both scientists are ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. ...

To examine how CO2 may interact with other factors that will accompany sea-level rise, the authors also manipulated CO2, salinity and flooding in a companion greenhouse study. ... "Elevated CO2 doubled the short-term rate of elevation gain in our marsh." [To find the back-up resource, read NASA's own Earth Obsevatory's march 23, 2009, piece:] ''Scientists Find Climate Change to have Paradoxical Effects on Coastal Wetlands''.