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Unearthed After 3,775 Years: Ancient Wood Discovery Sparks Climate Change Breakthrough

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A new University of Maryland-led study found that burying wood in the right environmental conditions can stop its decomposition and help curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Researchers have discovered an ancient log preserved for over 3,775 years, shedding light on potential strategies for combating climate change through “wood vaulting.” This method involves burying wood in low-permeability soil to prevent decomposition and carbon dioxide release. The study highlights how natural preservation can inform effective, low-cost climate solutions.

Wood Vaulting and Climate Change

An ordinary old log could help refine strategies to tackle climate change according to a new study published on September 26 in the journal Science.

A team of scientists led by University of Maryland Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Professor Ning Zeng analyzed a 3,775-year-old log and the soil it was excavated from. Their analysis revealed that the log had lost less than 5% carbon dioxide from its original state thanks to the low-permeability clay soil that covered it.

“The wood is nice and solid—you could probably make a piece of furniture out of it,” Zeng noted.

University of Maryland Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Professor Ning Zeng holds the 3,775-year-old log that is the subject of a new study in Science. Credit: Mark Sherwood, University of Maryland

The Preservation of Ancient Wood

Understanding the unique environmental factors that kept that ancient log in mint condition could help researchers perfect an emerging climate solution known as “wood vaulting,” which involves taking wood that is not commercially viable—such as trees destroyed by disease or wildfires, old furniture or unused construction materials—and burying it to stop its decomposition.

Trees naturally sequester carbon dioxide—a potent planet-warming gas—for as long as they live, making tree-planting projects a popular method of mitigating climate change. But on the flip side, when trees die and decompose, that greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

“People tend to think, ‘Who doesn’t know how to dig a hole and bury some wood?’” Zeng said. “But think about how many wooden coffins were buried in human history. How many of them survived? For a timescale of hundreds or thousands of years, we need the right conditions.”

Discovering a Centuries-Old Solution

In 2013, while conducting a wood vaulting pilot project in Quebec, Canada, Zeng discovered the 3,775-year-old log that became the focus of the Science study—a chance encounter that for Zeng felt “kind of miraculous.” While digging a trench to bury fresh wood, Zeng and other researchers spotted the log about 6.5 feet below the surface.

“When the excavator pulled a log out of the ground and threw it over to us, the three ecologists that I had invited from McGill University immediately identified it as Eastern red cedar,” Zeng recalled. “You could tell how well it was preserved. I remember standing there thinking, ‘Wow, here’s the evidence that we need!’”

While past studies have analyzed old samples of preserved wood, they tended to overlook the surrounding soil conditions, according to Zeng.

Advancements in Wood Vault Preservation

“There is a lot of geological and archeological evidence of preserved wood from hundreds to millions of years ago, but the focus of those studies was not ‘How we can engineer a wood vault to preserve that wood?’” Zeng said. “And the problem with designing a new experiment is that we can’t wait 100 years for the results.”

Shortly after the Quebec dig, UMD’s collaborators at MAPAQ, a government ministry in Montreal, conducted carbon dating to determine the log’s age. Then, in 2021, Visiting Research Professor Liangbing Hu in UMD’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering helped Zeng analyze the 3,775-year-old sample’s microscopic structure, chemical composition, mechanical strength, and density. They then compared those results to that of a freshly cut Eastern red cedar log, which revealed that the older sample had lost very little carbon dioxide.

The type of soil covering the log was the key reason for its remarkable preservation. The clay soil in that part of Quebec had an especially low permeability, meaning that it prevented or drastically slowed oxygen from reaching the log while also keeping out fungi and insects, the decomposers typically found in soil.

Because clay soil is common, wood vaulting could become a viable and low-cost option in many parts of the world. As a climate solution, Zeng noted that wood vaulting is best paired with other tactics to slow global warming, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As he and his colleagues continue to optimize wood vaulting, he looks forward to putting what they’ve learned into practice to help curb climate change.

“It’s quite an exciting discovery,” Zeng said of this latest study. “The urgency of climate change has become such a prominent issue, so there was even more motivation to get this analysis going.”

 

This article appeared in SCI Tech Daily (https://scitechdaily.com/unearthed-after-3775-years-ancient-wood-discovery-sparks-climate-change-breakthrough/).

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