Study shows outback soaking up CO2

[depakid]

Soaking up carbon: Australia's northern savanna.
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Australia's vast outback is remote and arid, but the expansive landscape could also play a cheap and effective role in the Federal Government's climate change solution. A new study has found around 6 million square kilometres of Australian outback is also a massive carbon bank, storing huge amounts of atmospheric pollution.

The area, from the central west of New South Wales to Cape York, across the Top End and down to the Wheat Belt in Western Australia, absorbs more than 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon. Patrick O'Leary, from the Pew Environment group which commissioned the study, says if managed properly it could reduce carbon pollution by 5 per cent by 2050.

"Right now our estimates are there's about 9.7 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the trees and plants of the outback so that's in the roots, stems and leaves and so on," he said. "About another well over a billion tonnes can be stored between now and 2050 if we can put into practice better land management."

That additional storage would be the equivalent of taking 7.5 million cars off the road every year for the next 40 years. Mr O'Leary says this is an effective and cheap part of a bigger solution, but so far it has been overlooked.

"Certainly the economic analysis in this report suggests that expanding our land management actions across the outback is a very cost effective way of storing carbon and reducing emissions when you compare it to other options," he said. "We still need to work hard on reducing industrial emissions, we still need a carbon price, but the outback must be a central part of any overall approach to climate change pollution."

More: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/14/2952894.htm?section=justin