It may seem bizarre, but burying teabags is all the rage among ecologists. "It's like a treasure hunt, trying to find them after you've left them somewhere for a year, sometimes two years," says Isla Myers-Smith at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who supervises Thomas's research. "I like a good treasure hunt," she says.

Of course, there is more to it than fun. Teabags, it turns out, provide an ingenious window onto a largely hidden world: soil. When soil litter - dead leaves, twigs and other organic material - decomposes, it emits carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Being able to measure the rate at which this happens is important - and nowhere more so than in the Arctic, where the tundra holds vast quantities of carbon and is emitting it into the air at an accelerating rate as the land heats up. Sizing up this problem should allow us to better predict the ramifications of a warmer world, and chart a course to avert disastrous climate change.

So how did teabags become a secret weapon in understanding the biggest problem the world faces? It started in 2010, when Joost Keuskamp and Judith Sarneel at Utrecht University in the Netherlands had a eureka moment. Both study soil decomposition, and their research entails painstakingly sewing or gluing together the seams of hundreds of tiny bags, filling them with dead plant material, then weighing and burying them in the ground. The ecologists later dig up the bags and reweigh them to track the progress of decay. During a well-earned tea break, the pair were bemoaning the tedium of this time-consuming job. If only there were some way to avoid it, they mused, while staring into the depths of their teacups.

Teabags! It was a genius idea. Not only would using them bypass all the sewing and gluing, but if ecologists everywhere buried the same type and brand of teabag instead of homemade litterbags, it would also give them a standard piece of kit with which to do their studies.

Soil decomposition occurs when microorganisms, including fungi and bacteria, digest dead plant material, transforming it into nutrients and releasing carbon dioxide. The rate of decay depends on environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, soil acidity and nutrient content, together with the chemical properties of the litter and the types of microorganisms present. It is a two-stage process. Typically, decay is fast at first, as microbes consume all the easily degraded organic material. In the next phase, the decomposition rate is slower because the material left behind is more resistant and takes longer to break down.

decrepit said..






Pete if you think it's BS it must be true science.