I have a question about the work published by Mills and Cowling: "How Fast Can Carbon Be Sequestered When Restoring Degraded Subtropical Thicket?" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264773087 )
I request help with any or all of the questions below.
1. The rates of CO2-absorption achieved by Agave and other species (Tables 1 and 2 of the reference above) seem rather high. Have these values been verified?
2. Does Spekboom hold any advantages over those species?
3. Which species of plants have the greatest propensity to capture CO2 from the atmosphere most rapidly over the short- to medium term (tens of months, rather than tens of years).
Peepul tree ( Ficus religiosa) I suppose is one answer. Plants, like peepal, can uptake Carbon dioxide during the night as well because they perform a special type of photosynthesis -Crassulacean Acid Metabolism(CAM). CAM occurs primarily in desert plants and epiphytes (plants that live on other plants, usually large trees). CAM plants do not open their stomata during the day in order to minimize water loss. During the night, they open their stomata and fix CO² in the form of malate. During the day, they break down the malate and use the released CO2 through Kalvin cycle to produce sugars, similar to C3 plants.
Hope this helps.
Thanks, Chandravadan Trivedi.
Do you have the rates at which various Mangrove species can capture atmospheric CO2, compared to the results reported for Agave etc in the Mills & Cowling work to which I referred?
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