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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Excess carbon dioxide, emitted by burning fossil fuels like coal and petroleum, is one of the most important factors in driving global warming. While the world is focused on controlling global warming by limiting these emissions, less attention has been paid to the capacity of vegetation and soils to take up and store carbon.

One of the most popular approaches to carbon storage is protecting tropical rainforests. If a rainforest is cut down, the carbon stored in the trunks and leaves will be released to the atmosphere. But plants in alpine communities in Norway also have a role to play in storing—or releasing—carbon dioxide.

"We don't think about how much carbon is actually stored right in our own backyard," says Mia Vedel Sørensen, a PhD candidate at NTNU's Department of Biology who is studying carbon storage in shrub vegetation in the Dovre mountains, in mid-Norway.

Sørensen compared three types of vegetation that are typical of the Norwegian mountains:

• Shrubs (willows)
• Heath (crowberry and heather)
• Meadow

"I wanted to figure out how much carbon these three vegetation types store and release. My hypothesis was that shrubs store more carbon than heath and meadow vegetation because shrubs have more biomass, and thus have higher rates of photosynthesis," she said.

But it turned out to be the opposite: Shrubs, even though they are tallest, actually store the least carbon.

"It surprised me that meadows actually store a lot more carbon than shrubs. The carbon in meadows is stored mostly below the ground, next to the roots," she said

The amount of carbon stored in heath vegetation is greater than in shrub vegetation, but less than in meadows, she said.

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