desert research institute

Plants and soils act like sponges for atmospheric carbon dioxide, but new research on the cover of this week's Nature finds that one abnormally warm year can suppress the amount of carbon dioxide taken up by some grassland ecosystems for up to two years.

The findings followed a four-year study of 12-ton containerized grassland plots at Nevada's Desert Research Institute.

Plots were extracted intact from the Oklahoma prairie and sealed inside four, living-room-sized environment chambers.

New research, reported this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, contaminated the Arctic and potentially affected human health and ecosystems in and around Earth's polar regions.