The Powerful Role of Soil Carbon Sequestration on Slowing the Growth or Reducing the Level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere--- It's the Little Things.

• Main Authors: Ginn, Emily, Church, Megan, Horton, Alana, John, Christopher
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Dominican Scholar 2018
• Subjects: Environmental Chemistry; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://scholar.dominican.edu/scw/scw2018/all-conference/72

Ever since the late 1980’s, members of the scientific community have been concerned that the rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide might cause the average temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere and the earth’s surface to rise. The consensus today is that this change is starting to have profound effects on the earth’s climate. The debate today is focused on what can be done to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide level increase. In 1958 the U.S. Weather Bureau recorded the level of CO2 of 315.04 ppm at their new Mauna Loa laboratory, and each year it continues to rise. This past year it broke through the 400 ppm level and is today 409 ppm. Without large scale intervention, all the predictions about temperature rise, climate change, sea level rise, and ocean acidification will happen. Work started over 10 years ago in Nicasio under the direction of Marin Carbon Project and continued with other related organization has shown that soil amendments can be added to rangelands which will restore the lands fertility and increase dramatically the level of carbon stored in the soil. Estimates from this project suggest that if all of the rangeland in Marin County were covered with a ½ inch layer of compost, one time, the amount of carbon stored in the soil by the “excess” photosynthetic activity and the associated biological processes would be great enough to remove the equivalent of all of California’s carbon dioxide emissions from residential and commercial fossil fuel burning for about 30 years. This number, although not a complete elimination of California’s CO2 emissions, does represent more than one third (actually 39%) of that emission. Using dairy derived compost could provide enough compost to support this kind of large scale mitigation if it did not have significant offsets associated with nitrogen-based emissions. Current regulations restrict fertilizer use based on it nitrogen level. This appears to be a one size fits all regulation lumping inorganic fertilizers together with compost derived ...