Afforestation on coal sites

The carbon gases can be removed from the atmosphere and deposited in the land, but it is also known that there is a carbon process that involves the soils at surface level. Soil carbon is a large pool of terrestrial carbon and holds more than the atmosphere or that is held in biomass. Understanding how the soil carbon is cycled can help in any process in trying to keep it sequestered in the soil so that it is not released back into the atmosphere. One study took this outlook to compare the soil carbon pools at deforested coal mines to those that had been reclaimed. The reclaimed mines had been purposely afforested and were compared to the unreclaimed sites that remained barren and to older forests. The investigation into the differences in the carbon flow at the sites showed that there was an increase in carbon dioxide flux at the reclaimed sites, which was attributed to a higher root biomass presence. This increased the soil respiration rate, which is better for the reclamation of the environment and the eventual means to sequester carbon dioxide