Dr. Elad Levintal of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his research team are exploring the desert for clues that may unlock solutions to climate change.
Levintal told the Jerusalem Post, “We’re focusing on the movement of greenhouse gases between the soil and the atmosphere.”
He added, “It’s a bit sad to say, but most of the universities with resources are not next to deserts, so there are fewer studies regarding deserts.”
The Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, which is part of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research on the Sde Boker campus of Ben-Gurion University (BGU) provides the resources for this research.
The team investigates how deserts respond and may contribute to climate change by creating C02 emissions from boreholes and wells.
“They can act like a straw, leading to the subsurface and allowing nasty materials to be emitted from layers that haven’t seen the atmosphere until now,” Levintal explains.
