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Article: Tree tests measure effect of elevated carbon dioxide
- Article from:
- Sunday Gazette-Mail
- Article date:
- July 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 Sunday Gazette-Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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RALEIGH, N.C. - In a corner of Duke Forest, rings of white towers
rise above the green canopy of the pine forest like futuristic
monuments.
Day and night, thousands of pounds of odorless carbon-dioxide gas
spews from the towers in computer-controlled streams. The goal is to
simulate a forest with greenhouse gas levels that approximate the
levels predicted by 2050.
For 13 years, researchers have been using the Blackwood section of
Duke Forest near Chapel Hill as a laboratory to explore whether
forests will grow fast enough in the future to help control predicted
increases of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. Trees absorb
carbon dioxide through tiny pores in their leaves and store ...