A centuries-old concept in soil science has recently been thrown out. Yet it remains a key ingredient in everything from climate models to advanced carbon-capture projects.
A good article. Two things that they touch on but don’t emphasized that I think are the absolutely critical take-aways
Soil isn’t the same everywhere and we miss opportunities when we generalize them. They are as different in process, make up, and biota as the other parts of tundra and jungle.
Soils are balanced, interacting systems (ecosystems). Carbon cycling is impacted by nitrogen cycling; the N Cycle is impacted by biota; biota is impacted by hydrology. We can take all of those statements and reverse the order and they’re still true. We can replace x and y in ‘x in soil is impacted by y’ with nearly any components of soil have it still be true. These are very complex systems.
Bottom line, thinking we can get any random soil to hold on to carbon just by putting some there is about as wise as expecting a toddler not to spill an open cup of juice you hand them. That isn’t saying that a targeted approach can’t be effective.
A good article. Two things that they touch on but don’t emphasized that I think are the absolutely critical take-aways
Soil isn’t the same everywhere and we miss opportunities when we generalize them. They are as different in process, make up, and biota as the other parts of tundra and jungle.
Soils are balanced, interacting systems (ecosystems). Carbon cycling is impacted by nitrogen cycling; the N Cycle is impacted by biota; biota is impacted by hydrology. We can take all of those statements and reverse the order and they’re still true. We can replace x and y in ‘x in soil is impacted by y’ with nearly any components of soil have it still be true. These are very complex systems.
Bottom line, thinking we can get any random soil to hold on to carbon just by putting some there is about as wise as expecting a toddler not to spill an open cup of juice you hand them. That isn’t saying that a targeted approach can’t be effective.