The sands of the desert are an important and forgotten
storehouse of carbon dioxide taken from the world’s atmosphere,
scientists heard today (Wednesday 2 April 2008) at the Society
for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting being held this week at
the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. “Desert soils are
unusual because the sand grains at the surface are bound
together into a crust by bacteria, reducing wind erosion and
adding nutrients to the soil. Deserts cover over one third of
the world’s land surface and yet our understanding of their
contribution to the atmospheric carbon dioxide balance is poor”,
says Dr Andrew Thomas of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Sands like those in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana are full of
cyanobacteria. These drought resistant bacteria can fix
atmospheric carbon dioxide, and together they add significant
quantities of organic matter to the nutrient deficient sands.
“We know that globally there is a huge exchange of carbon
between the atmosphere and the soil. As aver