Links Between Grasslands and Carbon Storage

Carbon dioxide is one of many greenhouse gases that help warm the atmosphere by trapping heat radiating from earth. This trapped heat is called the greenhouse effect and without it the earth would be about 33 degrees C colder (Janzen et al. 2002). It is however possible to have too much of a good thing. Most troublesome has been the increase in concentration of carbon dioxide over the last century as a result of human activity. As we burn more and more fossil fuels to power our cars and trucks, keep our industry humming and make our homes more comfortable, we are increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At present, human activity now adds about seven billion tones of carbon dioxide into the air every year (Janzen et al. 2002). Although there is uncertainty about how these changes will affect our climate, changes are taking place in the atmosphere. Alberta Environment (2002) states that the “average temperature of the Earth’s surface has increased by between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees C over the past 100 years.” For comparison purposes, during the last ice age, global temperature averages were only 4.3 degrees C cooler than they are today.