A new study aimed at a better understanding of the global carbon cycle and the phenomenon of climate change over three years.
The "Nature Plants" magazine recently published an international study evaluating the formation mechanism and growth of tree rings and their carbon acquisition dynamics in several parts of the world. This unprecedented global scientific project brought together a total of 33 researchers of 12 countries, Germany, Austria, Canada, China, Slovenia, Spain, Finland, France, Portugal, Czech Republic, Russia and Switzerland and the Portuguese team was composed of three scientists from the Centre for Functional Ecology (CEF) of the University of Coimbra ( UC).
One of the conclusions put forward is that the trees after all are great long-term carbon dioxide reservoirs, a fact that allows to estimate the amount of CO2 captured by the forests every year, that is, to know how the various arboreal specimens can control the issuance of this gas into the atmosphere, although they are not yet well understood all dynamic process taking place in these periods.
Other data obtained concern the formation of mechanism of the rings in forests of different climates, where as its training and development interfere in the procurement process and carbon accumulation. With these indicators scientists intend to withdraw the way forward on the complex issue of climate change. The study thus demonstrated that the formation of the rings is highly sensitive to photoperiod (hours of light exposure), the carbon accumulation process in terms of temperature in the most sensitive rings is very different between the forests of the Mediterranean and northern temperate forests of Europe, an important record to understand the relative contribution of these forests to the carbon cycle.
