Research on grasslands in Ireland, supervised by Prof Gary Lanigan (Teagasc – the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority) and Prof Rachel Creamer and Prof Rogier Schulte (Wageningen University & Research) has revealed that soils with high clay content in deeper layers lock away carbon for much longer, and at much greater depth than previously known. Publishing their results in Nature scientific-reports/” title=”View all articles about Scientific Reports here”>Scientific Reports, the authors demonstrate how these soils may play a prominent role in mitigating climate change and compensating for some of the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
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| Carbon storage in deeper soil layers may play a prominent role in mitigating climate change and compensating for some of the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. In the upper layer of the soil (upper part of the graph), the carbon is mostly linked to large soil particles (right side of the graph). This carbon is easily accessible for e.g. insects and microbes, causing a fast conversion into carbon dioxide. The lower layers of the soil (lower part of the graph) contain more carbon than expected. This carbon is linked to small soil particles (left side of the graph) and is therefore hard to get to for soil organisms, causing the carbon to remain in the soil for many decades. |
It is well known that all soils play an important role in the global cycle of carbon: soils store three times the amount of carbon that is contained within the atmosphere, and can be either a source of carbon emissions through land degradation, or a sink through the fixation of carbon into soils, a process known as sequestration. The Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledges the role of soils in climate mitigation through the 4per1000 initiative.
Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “Research finds a hidden carbon sink in the soils beneath our feet.”
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