Speaker
Description
A promising negative emission technology is organic carbon sequestration in soils, which mitigates climate change impacts and improves soil properties, such as water retention and fertility. Maximizing the incorporation of organic carbon deeper in the mineral soil, is critical to prevent forests and agricultural land from shifting from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
A solution to boost ecosystem health and kickstart the sequestration of soil organic carbon is rock dust application. This technique can stabilise organomineral C through increased biomass input, microbial efficiency, and stable mineral associated organic matter formation. Our results in 10 control and application pairs of forests show a fast (within four years, stable up to hundreds of years) and consistent net sequestration of 20 to 40 Mg C/ha more in the soils of the amended forests, with additional growth gains in trees resembling another 33 Mg C/ha in the decadal timescale. This means a potential to sequester carbon via a one-time rock dust application in Flemish forests (150 000 ha) of 60 Mg C/ha x 150 000 ha = 9 000 000 Mg C = 33 MtCO2. If rock dust application on agricultural land (610 000 ha) also stores a conservative 10 Mg C/ha more, this leads to an additional 22 MtCO2 stored. The total of 33 (forest_soil) + 33 (wood) + 22 (agricultural_soil) MtCO2 = 88 Mt CO2 is substantial and could with a carbon penalty for the spreading (factor 0,75) offset 5% of Flanders' cumulative emissions (66 MtCO2-eq/year) for the coming 20 years.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | No |
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| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
