Washington, DC—Models of the carbon cycle that are used to understand the effects of climate change in North America need to do a better job of accounting for the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by Midwestern agricultural crops during the growing season, according to new work led by Carnegie’s Wu Sun and Department of Global Ecology Director Anna Michalak. Their work, published in AGU Advances, has implications for scientists as well as policymakers.
Plants are capable of turning the Sun’s energy into food using a physiological process called photosynthesis. They take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through pores in their leaves and,