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Sugarcane, grown in Brazil to power automobiles as an alternative to gasoline, has a double benefit —if cultivated in massive scale, it also helps in cooling the climate. Researchers from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology found that sugarcane crops help lower the temperature of the surrounding air by reflecting sunlight back into space and "exhaling" cooler water. The study is the first to quantify the direct effects on the climate from sugarcane expansion in areas of existing crop and pastureland of the Cerrado, in central Brazil. Scott Loarie and his team used data from hundreds of satellite images over 733,000 sq miles. They measured temperature, reflectivity (also called albedo), and evapotranspiration — the water loss from the soil and from plants as they exhale water vapour. "We found that
shifting from natural vegetation to crops or pasture results in local
warming because the plants give off less beneficial water. But the
bamboo-like sugarcane is more reflective and gives off more water —
much like the natural vegetation,"said Loarie. It’s a potential
win-win for the climate — using sugarcane to power vehicles reduces
carbon emissions, while growing it lowers the local air
temperature," he added. — ANI
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