‘Earthworm Dilemma’ Has Climate Scientists Racing to Keep Up

Erin K. Cameron, an environmental scientist at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who studies the boreal incursion of earthworms, found that 99.8 percent of the earthworms in her study area in Alberta belonged Dendrobaena octaedra , an invasive species that eats leaf litter but doesn’t burrow into the soil. If Dr. Cameron’s calculations bear out, it means the lowly earthworm stands to alter the carbon balance of the planet by adding to the load in the atmosphere. The global boreal forest is a muscular part of Earth’s carbon cycle; at least one-fifth of the carbon that cycles through air, soil and oceans passes through the boreal , said Sylvie Quideau, a soil biogeochemist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Source: www.nytimes.com