Getting the dirt on storing carbon in the soil

Ecologists at Argonne are studying the ways plants and microbes influence carbon accumulation in soil. Their findings may contribute to a plan to store some of the atmosphere’s excess carbon dioxide in the ground.

"We believe we can use nature to help handle the problem until technological fixes can be put in place," said Argonne terrestrial ecologist Julie Jastrow.

Her work is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) global climate change research program to study the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in terrestrial ecosystems. "Carbon sequestration" is one potential component of future international efforts to slow the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which many scientists believe contributes to global warming.

Argonne ecologists are studying the prairie at nearby Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. When Fermilab was built 30 years ago, some of its agricultural land was planted with non-native pasture grasses. Ecologists began restoring parts of this planted land to its natural prairie state a few years later.

Argonne researchers are comparing how these two types of vegetation sequester carbon. Results suggest that native prairie grasses may accumulate more soil carbon over a longer period of time than the pasture grasses. Verification tests are underway in 2001.

Increasing the length of time carbon is sequestered is important to limiting atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Researchers are investigating how to increase the amount of carbon entering into soil-organic matter "pools" that are protected against decomposition so that accumulated carbon remains in the soil longer.

This research is being carried out for DOE’s Center for Research on Enhancing Carbon Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems (CSiTE), which is managed by a consortium of researchers from Argonne, Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. The center will also study ways to monitor, predict and verify sequestration so that it may be appropriately accounted for in national inventories of greenhouse gas emissions.

CSiTE is funded by the Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Environmental Sciences Division, Global Change Research Program

For more information please contact Donna Jones Pelkie