Crabby Climate Change: Are Tiny Crustaceans Making Global Warming Worse

What We Can't Sea

• Bookmark
• Add to queue

Climate change is a problem that's affecting us all, but did you know that even tiny crustaceans can make it worse? Listen now to learn more.

In the era of climate change, we are all looking for new and innovative ways to get greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere. Climate scientists are tasked with “balancing the books” of our global atmosphere; they add up the sources and sinks of these greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, to better understand how they move around the planet. Salt marshes are important ecosystems that take up greenhouse gases because plants grow quickly in salt marshes, die, and then get buried in the marsh soil. This super quick grow and die cycle pulls gases such as carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores them in the soil. However, changes in the soil chemistry can rerelease these greenhouse gases, undoing this essential work done by marshes in the fight against climate change.