The Effects of Gravitational Forces on the Microbiome

The fens are a 4000 square kilometer area of what was formerly marshy and swampy soil that's now very fertile. It accounts for about a third of the vegetables that we grow in the UK just produced in this one region until the 1600s. When you remove the water from the soil you allow air to get deeper into the soil which brings with it oxygen so microbes release more CO2 than equivalent farm soil. The East Anglian fens on their own account for 400,000 tons of carbon being emitted each year. There's very little methane emissions from the fens but some could be removed by re-importing food elsewhere.