Quote:
Originally Posted by maikeru
This is not correct. Soils and the atmosphere are interconnected, and affect each other in significant ways. Also, soils contain and often harbor significant amounts of cyanobacteria, algae, lichen, etc. that perform photosynthesis (and in the case of cyanobacteria can fix N2). Even in the case of deserts (and Antarctica), many have a crust of living lichen on the surface, where cyanobacteria/algae and fungi work together to fix N2, perform photosynthesis, and grow in some of the harshest places on earth. Also, I have some biochar-filled pots with herbs that I keep in my room that have significant cyanobacterial growth on the surface of the soils, which makes them visibly tinted blue-green or even somewhat slimey. These coexist and flourish with the plants and are probably happily photosynthesizing away. Here are a few links on soil microbiology and soil science to perk your interest if you're so inclined:
Soil crust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (I'm familiar with this because I live in Utah and have seen cryptobiotic soil many times--it's common in the undisturbed desert areas, although it's very fragile)
Soil Bacteria | NRCS SQ
Cyanobacteria Photos |
I think you folks are making this way way too complicated.
Look at it this way - if every bit of animal life disappeared, and the plants remained, we would still scrub about the same amount of CO2 from the air. With no animal life, the carbon from the dead plants would just sit in the soil once the plant decayed, and become coal or petroleum or whatever.
Certainly there is life in Antarctica, and in deserts - but that is irrelevant to this thread. My point is that over 97% of all plant life is in the oceans, not on the land - and that the Amazon forest makes up a small percentage of that even smaller percentage of land plant life. Thus, variances in thickness of the Amazon would have a negligible effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
