There is much more carbon stored in Earth’s soil than in its atmosphere.
There is much more carbon stored in Earth’s soil than in its atmosphere. A significant portion of this soil carbon is in organic form (carbon bound to carbon), called soil organic carbon (SOC). Notably, unlike the inorganic carbon in soils, the amount of SOC, and how quickly it is built up or lost, can be influenced by humans. Since its advent about 10,000 years ago, agriculture has caused a significant amount of SOC to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change.
Quantifying the amount of SOC in agricultural fields is therefore essential for monitoring the carbon cycle and developing sustainable management practices that minimize carbon emissions and sequester carbon from the atmosphere to the soil to reduce or reverse the climate effects of agriculture.
“Accurate and efficient SOC estimation is essential,” said Eric Potash, a Research Scientist in the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) and Department of Natural Resource & Environmental Sciences (NRES) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Governments need to estimate SOC in order to implement policies to minimize climate change. Researchers need to estimate SOC to develop sustainable management practices. And farmers need to estimate SOC to participate in emerging carbon credit markets.”
The traditional and most reliable way to quantify SOC is by soil sampling, with analyses in the lab (“wet chemical” measurement). But which locations in the field should be sampled? And how many samples should be taken for an accurate estimate? Each additional soil core adds significant labor and expense — and uncertainties in how to optimize sampling can lead to substantial extra costs.
Read more at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment
Image: Research Technician Michael Douglass and Postdoctoral Researcher Nan Li conducting deep soil coring for quantifying soil organic carbon stocks on a farm in Piatt County, Ill. (Credit: Dan Schaefer)
