10/12/2017 Climate solution in soil?

Soil holds potential to slow global warming, researchers find -- ScienceDaily

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Climate solution in soil?

Soil holds potential to slow global warming, researchers find

Date: October 5, 2017

Source: Stanford University

Summary: The land under our feet and the plant matter it contains could offset a significant amount of carbon emissions if managed properly. More
research is needed to unlock soil's potential to mitigate global warming, improve crop yields and increase resilience, say researchers.

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FULL STORY

Forested permafrost degrading in Alaska leaving behind carbon-emitting wetlands.

Credit: Jennifer Harden

If you want to do something about global warming, look under your feet. Managed well, soil's ability to trap carbon
dioxide is potentially much greater than previously estimated, according to Stanford researchers who claim the resource
could "significantly" offset increasing global emissions. They call for a reversal of federal cutbacks to related research
programs to learn more about this valuable resource.

The work, published in two overlapping studies Oct. 5 in Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics and Global Change Biology, emphasizes
the need for more research into how soil -- if managed well -- could mitigate a rapidly changing climate.

"Dirt is not exciting to most people," said earth system science professor Rob Jackson, lead author of the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and
Systematics article and coauthor of the Global Change Biology paper. "But it is a no-risk climate solution with big cobenefits. Fostering soil health protects
food security and builds resilience to droughts, floods and urbanization."

Humble, yet mighty

Organic matter in soil, such as decomposing plant and animal residues, stores more carbon than do plants and the atmosphere combined. Unfortunately,
the carbon in soil has been widely lost or degraded through land use changes and unsustainable forest and agricultural practices, fires, nitrogen deposition
and other human activities. The greatest near-term threat comes from thawing permafrost in Earth's northern reaches, which could release massive
amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

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10/12/2017 Climate solution in soil? Soil holds potential to slow global warming, researchers find -- ScienceDaily
Despite these risks, there is also great promise, according to Jackson and Jennifer Harden, a visiting scholar in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy &
Environmental Sciences and lead author of the Global Change Biology paper.

Improving how the land is managed could increase soil's carbon storage enough to offset future carbon emissions from thawing permafrost, the
researchers find. Among the possible approaches: reduced tillage, year-round livestock forage and compost application. Planting more perennial crops,
instead of annuals, could store more carbon and to reduce erosion by allowing roots to reach deeper into the ground.

Jackson, Harden and their colleagues also found that about 70 percent of all sequestered carbon in the top meter of soil is in lands directly affected by
agriculture, grazing or forest management -- an amount that surprised the authors.

"I think if beer bets were involved, we all would have lost," Harden said of her coauthors.

Jackson and his coauthors found a number of other surprises in their analysis. For example, plant roots are ?ve times more likely than leaves to turn into
soil organic matter for the same mass of material. The study also provides the most complete estimate yet of carbon in peatland and permafrost -- almost
half of the world's estimated soil carbon.

"Retaining and restoring soil organic matter helps farmers grow better crops, purifies our water and keeps the atmosphere cleaner," said Jackson, Michelle
and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

Overcoming obstacles

The Jackson-led study describes an unexpectedly large stock of potentially vulnerable carbon in the northern taiga, an ecosystem that is warming more
rapidly than any other. These carbon stocks are comparatively poorly mapped and understood.

The study warns of another danger: overestimating how the organic matter in soil is distributed. Jackson and his coauthors calculate there may be 25-30
percent less than currently estimated due to constraints from bedrock, a factor previously not analyzed in published scientific research.

While scientists are now able to remotely map and monitor environmental changes on Earth's surface, they still don't have a strong understanding of the
interactions among biological, chemical and physical processes regulating carbon in soils. This knowledge is critical to understanding and predicting how
the carbon cycle will respond to changes in the ecosystem, increasing food production and safeguarding natural services we depend on, such as crop
pollination and underground water storage.

A rapidly changing climate -- and its effects on soil -- make these scientific advances all the more urgent.

"Soil has changed under our feet," Harden said. "We can't use the soil maps made 80 years ago and expect to find the same answers."

However, funding pressures such as federal cuts to climate science, combined with turnover in science staff and a lack of systematic data threaten
progress on soil carbon research. Jackson, Harden and their colleagues call for a renewed push to gather significantly more data on carbon in the soil and
learn more about the role it plays in sequestering carbon. They envision an open, shared network for use by farmers, ranchers and other land managers as
well as policymakers and organizations that need good data to inform land investments and conservation.

"If we lose momentum on carbon research, it will stifle our momentum for solving both climate and land sustainability problems," Harden said.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Stanford University. Original written by Rob Jordan. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Robert B. Jackson, Kate Lajtha, Susan E. Crow, Gustaf Hugelius, Marc G. Kramer, Gervasio Piñeiro. The Ecology of Soil Carbon: Pools,
Vulnerabilities, and Biotic and Abiotic Controls. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 2014; 48 (1) DOI: 10.1146/annurev-
ecolsys-112414-054234

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