Live trees give us oxygen, but gases released by dead trees — dubbed “tree farts” — may be having a silent but deadly effect on climate.
A team of ecologists went sniffing for tree farts in ghost forests, which form when saltwater from rising sea levels poison a woodland, leaving behind a marsh full of standing dead trees, according to ScienceNews.
To be fair, dead trees account for roughly one-fifth of the greenhouse gases emitted by skeletal, marshy forests along the coast of North Carolina, researchers report online May 10 in Biogeochemistry. However, these phantom ecosystems are expected to expand with climate change, but it’s unclear exactly how they contribute to the world’s carbon budget.