Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 19 June 1998:
Vol. 280. no. 5371, pp. 1903 - 1904
DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5371.1903
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Research Commentaries

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Research commentaries

OCEAN CHEMISTRY:
Enhanced: Black Carbon and the Carbon Cycle

Thomas A. J. Kuhlbusch

When vegetation and fossil fuels burn, the combustion creates "black carbon" that becomes distributed throughout the environment. Determining how it is created and where it goes is important for studying the past history of fire and for understanding global carbon and oxygen budgets. In his Research Commentary, Kuhlbusch discusses results reported in the same issue by Masiello and Druffel in which carbon mass and isotope measurements were used to study the age of black carbon in ocean sediment. They find that the black carbon is 2400 to 13,900 years older than the concurrently deposited sediment, suggesting that the black carbon must have been stored in some as-yet unknown intermediate pool.

The author is in the Department of Process and Aerosol Measurement Technology, University of Duisburg, 47057 Duisburg, Germany. E-mail: tky{at}uni-duisburg.de

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Direct Detection of Black Carbon in Soils by Py-GC/MS, Carbon-13 NMR Spectroscopy and Thermogravimetric Techniques.
J. M. De la Rosa, H. Knicker, E. Lopez-Capel, D. A. C. Manning, J. A. Gonzalez-Perez, and F. J. Gonzalez-Vila (2008)
Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 72, 258-267
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Soils as sources and sinks of greenhouse gases.
J. Leifeld (2006)
Geological Society, London, Special Publications 266, 23-44
   Abstract »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)