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The Chinese coal forests continued to flourish well into Permian times. This resurgence of the forests in very late Carboniferous caused lowering of global temperatures and a return of extensive polar ice in southern Gondwana as the forests rapid rate of growth sequestered carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. [3] [4] Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution.
Not until the forests of the Middle Devonian could large-scale wildfires really gain a foothold. [8] Fires really took off in the high-oxygen, high-biomass period of the Carboniferous, where the coal-forming forests frequently burned; the coal that is the fossilised remains of those trees may contain as much as 10-20% charcoal by volume. These ...
Coal forms when organic matter builds up in waterlogged, anoxic swamps, known as peat mires, and is then buried, compressing the peat into coal. The majority of Earth's coal deposits were formed during the late Carboniferous and early Permian. The plants from which they formed contributed to changes in the Carboniferous Earth's atmosphere. [25]
The belt of Carboniferous coal fields extends into central Europe, [42] and much of this is bituminous coal. Bituminous coal fields are found in Poland [43] and the Czech Republic, [44] and the Polish deposits are one of the most important of that nation's natural resources. [45] The Czech deposits have been exploited since prehistoric times. [44]
Proterogyrinus, a Carboniferous amphibian (non-amniote tetrapod) The Carboniferous spans from 359 million to 299 million years ago. [16] Tropical swamps dominated the Earth, and the large amounts of trees sequestered much of the carbon that became coal deposits (hence the name Carboniferous and the term "coal forest").
The combustion of coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO 2 in the atmosphere. [56] Electric generation using coal burning produces approximately twice the greenhouse gasses per kilowatt compared to generation using natural gas. [57] Coal mining releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Some cyclothems may have formed as a result of marine regressions and transgressions related to growth and decay of ice sheets, respectively, as the Carboniferous was a time of widespread glaciation in the southern hemisphere. [4] A more general interpretation of sequences invokes Milankovitch cycles. [5] [6]