An Auburn University professor says human-induced methane and nitrous oxide gas emissions overwhelm terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake—contributing to climate change—and thus should be reduced to alleviate the problem, according to a study published in the March 10 issue of the scientific journal, Nature.
Hanqin Tian, director of the International Center for Climate and Global Change Research in Auburn's School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, is the lead author of "The terrestrial biosphere as a net source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere." His Auburn colleagues, Assistant Professor Shufen Pan, research fellow Jia Yang, graduate student Bowen Zhang and former research fellow Chaoqun Lu, now an assistant professor at Iowa State University, served as co-authors among an international research team of 23 scientists from 16 institutions in four countries.
Nature is widely regarded as the world's most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal.
"This study for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, examined the net balance of three major greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the land biosphere and the contribution of human activities during the past three decades," said Tian, who serves as the Solon and Martha Dixon Professor and Alumni Professor at Auburn.
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