One Scientist Works to Recreate Ice Age Ecology to Slow Global Warming
A Russian scientist is working to recreate Ice Age conditions by rewilding — reintroducing native beasts to Siberia. He hopes the move will help slow global warming. He wants to start with native musk oxen and then add other species like reindeer, foxes and even Siberian tigers. By returning this vast frozen wasteland to fertile farm country where animals roam free in tall grasses, melting permafrost may be halted. At least that’s Sergey Zimov’s theory.
He believes that the reintroduction of animals like musk oxen, Yakutian horses, reindeer and others who break and eat bushes will help fertilize the soil and allow grass to grow for the first time in 10,000 years. Then most trees will disappear, returning the land to large meadows filled with vegetation.
Animals would tamp down the snow preventing it from insulating the ground in the winter. This would slow the melting of permafrost, a key contributor to global warming.
Though Zimoff is an expert in quantum physics, his research on permafrost, greenhouse gas emissions and mammoth archaeology has made the series of cabins which he calls his lab in Siberia a destination for top scientists from all over the world.
One Response to “One Scientist Works to Recreate Ice Age Ecology to Slow Global Warming”
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I just saw this story on NBC news tonight! Although the newscast reported this lab in Siberia could be re-created to the point of stopping and/or reversing global warming…would it be enough to cease the newly erupting pockets in our artic regions where methane is being touted as accelerating global warming? And what about the South Atlantic Anomoly activities?