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Tue, 21st Apr 2020 16:39:00 |
We Could Release Herds of Animals in The Arctic to Fight Climate Change, Says Study |
Herds of horses, bison and reindeer could play a significant part in saving the world from an acceleration in global heating. That is the conclusion of a recent study showing how grazing herbivores can slow down the pace of thawing permafrost in the Arctic.
The study - a computerized simulation based on real-life, on-the ground data - finds that with enough animals, 80 percent of all permafrost soils around the globe could be preserved through 2100.
The research was inspired by an experiment in the town of Chersky, Siberia featured on CBS News' 60 Minutes. The episode introduces viewers to an eccentric scientist named Sergey Zimov who resettled grazing animals to a piece of the Arctic tundra more than 20 years ago.
Zimov is unconventional, to say the least, even urging geneticists to work on resurrecting a version of the now-extinct woolly mammoth to aid in his quest. But through the years he and his son Nikita have observed positive impacts from adding grazing animals to the permafrost area he named Pleistocene Park, in a nod to the last ice age.
Permafrost is a thick layer of soil that remains frozen year-round. Because of the rapidly warming climate in Arctic regions, much of the permafrost is not permanently frozen anymore. Thawing permafrost releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases that have been buried in the frozen soil for tens of thousands of years, back into the atmosphere.
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