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3.4 Million Tonnes of Carbon Found in Earth’s Largest Logjam, Study Reveals.

Scientists have discovered the largest known woody deposit in the world, which is located in Canada’s Nunavut in the Arctic and contains 3.4 million tonnes of carbon. Fallen trees in the Arctic make their way from forests to the ocean through rivers, and as the river twists and turns, the logs can stack up, resulting in long-term carbon storage.

The deposit covers 51 square kilometres (20 square miles) of the Mackenzie River Delta. ‘That’s a sizeable amount of carbon,’ said Alicia Sendrowski, a research engineer who led the study while at Colorado State University. ‘We have great knowledge about carbon in other forms, but not what we call ‘large carbon’ – large wood.’ The Arctic’s cold, often dry, or icy conditions mean trees can be preserved for tens of thousands of years, which makes the discovery of the logjam even more significant.

Virginia Ruiz-Villanueva, a fluvial geomorphologist at the University of Lausanne who was not involved in the study, stated, ‘it’s important to study this wood not only for the carbon cycle but in general for our understanding of how these natural fluvial systems work.’

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