Field days with improved tef varieties in Debre Zeyt, Ethiopia

Photo: Zerihun Tadele
Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture
News article

The Contribution of Boreal Wetlands to the Northern Hemisphere Carbonyl Sulfide Sink

Carbonyl sulfide (COS) is a gas used to study the carbon cycle because plants absorb it in a similar way as they absorb carbon dioxide. However, to use COS effectively, all sources and sinks must be understood and nowadays there still is an unexplained missing sink in high northern latitudes. Budget calculations of COS in boreal regions typically look at the contribution of forests, but not of wetlands. We measured COS fluxes over a boreal wetland, compared them to COS fluxes measured over a nearby forest and upscaled the fluxes to estimate their contribution to the boreal region and to verify if boreal wetlands can account for the missing sink. With our measurements we show the importance of including boreal wetland COS fluxes in budget calculation

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