Uzbek Steppe Could Help
Fight Global Warming

Through carbon sequestration, rangelands can play a significant role in controlling global warming. Their vegetation isolates carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into plant biomass through photosynthesis. This provides feed for livestock, improves the quality of the soil, and limits soil erosion.

ow much does the Central Asian steppe do to control global warming? ICARDA is trying to find this out, in collaboration with US scientists from ARS-USDA-USU Logan (Utah, USA), and Uzbek colleagues from the Karakul Sheep Breeding Institute (KSBI) and the Samarkand University in Uzbekistan.
      The work took a major step forward with the installation of a CO2 Bowen Ratio equipment at a site near Samarkand on 3 and 4 March 1998. ICARDA Range Specialist Dr Gustave Gintzburger oranized, and participated in, the installation.
      "Most people realize that vegetation is our major ally in the war against global warming. But they don't always know why. We also tend to underestimate the vegetation of the arid zones because the plant cover is small compared to other, more humid, environments," he says.
      There are three major 'greenhouse gases' which are contributing to global warming by trapping heat from the sun inside the atmosphere. The biggest single culprit is carbon dioxide, or CO2. It is released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels; plants, however, claw it back out of the air and convert it to plant biomass and soil organic matter. In these forms, it helps provide feed for the livestock on the range,           

improves the quality of the soil, and limits soil erosion.
      The steppe and rangeland of North Africa, West and Central Asia has a lot to offer in this respect. The area is so vast--a bit over 500 million hectares in ICARDA's regional mandate, of which 260 million are in the Newly-Independent Republics--that it is thought to be a major potential contributor to the global carbon sequestration. The Bowen Ratio equipment will allow scientists to evaluate the CO2  budget from a representative Artemisia spp. range in Uzbekistan, thus quantifying the carbon-sequestration process. Similar Bowen Ratio equipment is currently running on 12 rangeland sites in USA as part of a world effort.
       Installing this micro-meteorological equipment was quite a challenge, as the team was trying to catch the beginning of the season that generally comes abruptly after a harsh winter. Dr Nick Saliendra (CO2 Plant Physiologist, ARS-USU Logan), Dr Mukhtor Nassyrov (Plant Physiologist, Karakul Sheep Breeding Institute), colleagues from the Samarkand University in Uzbekistan, and Dr Gintzburger spent a week installing the Bo

wen Ratio Equipment in freezing temperature, snow and a bitterly cold wind in the Uzbek steppe. After some minor teething troubles, the complex equipment is now up and running on the range. It is under the scientific and technical control of Dr Nassyrov, who is in charge of monitoring and downloading the data. The site is on a protected range site at the Karnap station 120 km southwest of Samarkand, in a district where ICARDA scientists are also studying the structural and economic changes of the livestock and range systems.
       Dr Gintzburger pays special tribute to Dr Doug Johnson (CO2 Project Leader, ARS-USDA), and Dr Tagir Gilmanov (a leading Russian Vegetation Modeler, South Dakota State University) for joining with ICARDA in the CO2 flux monitoring project as part of a GL-CRSP project in Central Asia.
       The team has surveyed possible locations for CO2 monitoring in the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan and Akmola (in Kazakhstan) to establish the CO2 flux monitoring sites.