Chris Reinhard, associate professor of biogeochemistry at the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, said there’s been interest in the carbon cycle for a long time. 

“Some of our research at Georgia Tech and research as collaborators looks at the basics of how the Earth's carbon cycle works in the most general way,” said Reinhard. “But in the last 10 or so years, we've gotten really preoccupied with the impacts of human activity on the carbon cycle. And that spans a whole range of things, because we do all sorts of things to the Earth system as a species.”