Monday, August 27, 2007
News The curse of kudzu
Posted by Scott Freeman on Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 9:30 PM
Kudzu sucks.
That goes without saying. But the carnivorous and impossible-to-kill vine, which was brought from Asia and planted throughout the South in an attempt to control erosion, does more than take over our land and trees. It seems it is a leading cause of ozone pollution.
Two scientists, Jonathan Hickman of SUNY-Stony Brook and Manuel Lerdau, director of Virginia's Blandy Experimental Farm, told a recent meeting of the Ecological Society of America that the soil where kudzu lives may produce two times the amount of the ozone-forming nitrogen compounds of other soil.
Kudzu also produces a lot of a compound called isoprene, one of the volatile organic compounds that combine with nitrogen-oxygen compounds to make ozone. "You could be looking at a plant that's actually a little ozone factory," Hickman was quoted in the Athens Banner-Herald.
The scientists studied kudzu patches in Madison County, outside Athens.
There are approximately 7 million acres of kudzu in the Southeast. The scientists also studied kudzu in Maryland, and learned that Georgia's kudzu is much heartier. "The kudzu in Georgia is much healthier, with denser populations," Lerdau said.
But we already knew that, right?
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