CLEVER Planets Rajdeep Dasgupta publishes a book on carbon

By Mejs Hasan
Clever Planets Website, Education & Outreach Coordinator

One of the main tasks of CLEVER Planets is to study how elements like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and others ended up on Earth. And not just ended up on Earth, but in places on Earth where they could be accessed by emerging life-forms that must have them (i.e., not buried deeply beneath the surface.)

Now, CLEVER Planets researchers have helped to write “Deep carbon: Past to present“, a book that “offers a critical summary” of what is known about deep carbon. “Deep” carbon refers to buried carbon. It may be buried, but scientists are discovering that deep carbon still has a large impact on oceans, the atmosphere, and life on the surface of the planet.

The new book delves into topics like: how much deep carbon is there? Where does it come from and how does it affect the global carbon cycle? These are questions that 1200 members of the global Deep Carbon Observatory have been wrestling with over the last 10  years.

The book will be available in hardback form in December, but you can read it on-line for free right now. It is 670 pages long in total.

The book was co-edited by Rajdeep Dasgupta, the head of CLEVER Planets research.

Dasgupta and his student Daman Grewal also wrote the second chapter in the book: “Origin and early differentiation of carbon and associated life-essential volatile elements on Earth.”

A quartet of CLEVER Planets co-investigators, post-docs, and collaborators also wrote chapter 11: “A framework for understanding whole Earth carbon cycling.”​

 


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This is an Open Access publication