Shock to the crop system

New study evaluates how climate shocks impact the planted and harvested areas for crops

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE

 

IMAGE: DONGYANG WEI, A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES, AND KYLE DAVIS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF PLANT AND SOIL SCIENCES, AS WELL AS A RESIDENT FACULTY MEMBER WITH UD’S DATA SCIENCE INSTITUTE, LED A NEW STUDY THAT FOCUSED ON CROP PRODUCTION SHOCKS AND HOW THEY ARE AFFECTED BY VARIATIONS IN PLANTED AND HARVESTED AREAS. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE/ EVAN KRAPE

As the world faces more climate variability and extremes in the face of global warming, sudden environmental changes add an extra layer of stress to food production in the United States and around the world. It is critical, then, to figure out how the areas in which crops are planted and harvested respond to these stressors, which can bring on ‘shocks’ in production – or, put differently, sudden and statistically significant crop declines. 

These production shocks are a big concern in terms of food stability and many crops in the United States—such as corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat — are all experiencing more frequent production reductions as a result of these shocks.

A new study published in the Nature Sustainability scientific journal and led by the University of Delaware’s Dongyang Wei looked at these production shocks and, specifically, how they are affected by variations in planted and harvested areas. 

Kyle Davis, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences and the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, as well as a resident faculty member with UD’s Data Science Institute, is coordinating author on the paper.

Wei, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, said prior studies have focused on crop yield and how the yield variability affects production but very few studies have looked at the role of planted and harvested areas. Because production is the combined result of how much area a farmer plants (the planted area), how much of that area they can harvest (the harvested area) and the yield of the crop in that area, it is important to evaluate all three of these factors when assessing production stability.

“What we did was to focus on the U.S., the world’s largest producer and exporter of cereal grains, to see how these three components—crop yield, planted area, and harvested area—affected food production stability and to what degree they are related to climate extremes,” said Wei. 

For the study, the researchers looked at county-level data on seven crops: barley, corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, spring wheat, and winter wheat.

These are the main crops that are grown in the United States, accounting for about 70 percent of the country’s total cropland. In addition to being widely produced, they have a lot of readily available data that covers a long time period. As a result, the researchers were able to look at data sets from 1978-2020. 

“Agriculture is one of the sectors most directly exposed to the effects of climate change,” said Davis. “Understanding how the stability of crop production is influenced by variations in yield, planted area, and harvested area – and how these influences may differ between crops – is critical to more effectively adapting agriculture in the face of rising climate change and extreme climate events. Dongyang’s research is an important contribution to our understanding on this topic.”

Using time-series data and statistical methods to detect how frequently shocks occur, they found that shocks in planted and harvested areas co-occur with more than half of the production shocks for the study crops. 

They then looked at the extent to which each of the three components contribute to the size of a production shock and found that while yield fluctuations contribute more than the other two components for corn, cotton, soybean and winter wheat, changes in planted and harvested areas play a more important role in the magnitude of production shocks for barley, sorghum and winter wheat. 

Wei said this is important because it shows that researchers should focus on all three variables instead of simply focusing on the yield and ignoring the planted and harvested areas. 

“We want to raise the importance of considering all three of the components when we are facing rising climate variability and climate disruptions on the food systems,” said Wei. “Yield is important, but an exclusive focus on yield stability severely constrains the solution space. If we want to have greater flexibility in adapting agriculture to climate change, we should focus on ways to stabilize planted and harvested areas too. The producers’ decisions on cropping patterns can play a crucial role in stabilizing food production.” 

---

JOURNAL

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-023-01152-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

Key role of planted and harvested area fluctuations in US crop production shocks

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Jun-2023

This salty gel could harvest water from desert air

A new material developed by MIT engineers exhibits “record-breaking” vapor absorption.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: MIT ENGINEERS HAVE SYNTHESIZED A SUPERABSORBENT MATERIAL THAT CAN SOAK UP A RECORD AMOUNT OF MOISTURE FROM THE AIR, EVEN IN DESERT-LIKE CONDITIONS. PICTURED ARE THE HYDROGEL DISCS SWOLLEN IN WATER. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE: GUSTAV GRAEBER AND CARLOS D. DÍAZ-MARÍN

MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent material that can soak up a record amount of moisture from the air, even in desert-like conditions. 

As the material absorbs water vapor, it can swell to make room for more moisture. Even in very dry conditions, with 30 percent relative humidity, the material can pull vapor from the air and hold in the moisture without leaking. The water could then be heated and condensed, then collected as ultrapure water. 

The transparent, rubbery material is made from hydrogel, a naturally absorbent material that is also used in disposable diapers. The team enhanced the hydrogel’s absorbency by infusing it with lithium chloride — a type of salt that is known to be a powerful dessicant. 

The researchers found they could infuse the hydrogel with more salt than was possible in previous studies. As a result, they observed that the salt-loaded gel absorbed and retained an unprecedented amount of moisture, across a range of humidity levels, including very dry conditions that have limited other material designs. 

If it can be made quickly, and at large scale, the superabsorbent gel could be used as a passive water harvester, particularly in the desert and drought-prone regions, where the material could continuously absorb vapor, that could then be condensed into drinking water. The researchers also envision that the material could be fit onto air conditioning units as an energy-saving, dehumidifying element. 

“We’ve been application-agnostic, in the sense that we mostly focus on the fundamental properties of the material,” says Carlos Díaz-Marin, a mechanical engineering graduate student and member of the Device Research Lab at MIT. “But now we are exploring widely different problems like how to make air conditioning more efficient and how you can harvest water. This material, because of its low cost and high performance, has so much potential.”

Díaz-Marin and his colleagues have published their results in a paper appearing today in Advanced Materials. The study’s MIT co-authors are Gustav Graeber, Leon Gaugler, Yang Zhong, Bachir El Fil, Xinyue Liu, and Evelyn Wang. 

“Best of both worlds”

In MIT’s Device Research Lab, researchers are designing novel materials to solve the world’s energy and water challenges. In looking for materials that can help to harvest water from the air, the team zeroed in on hydrogels — slippery, stretchy gels that are mostly made from water and a bit of cross-linked polymer. Hydrogels have been used for years as absorbent material in diapers because they can swell and soak up a large amount of water when it comes in contact with the material.

“Our question was, how can we make this work just as well to absorb vapor from the air?” Díaz-Marin says. 

He and his colleagues dug through the literature and found that others had experimented with mixing hydrogels with various salts. Certain salts, such as the rock salt used to melt ice, are very efficient at absorbing moisture, including water vapor. And the best among them is lithium chloride, a salt that is capable of absorbing over 10 times its own mass in moisture. Left in a pile on its own, lithium chloride could attract vapor from the air, though the moisture would only pool around the salt, with no means of retaining the absorbed water. 

So, researchers have attempted to infuse the salt into hydrogel — producing a material that could both hold in moisture and swell to accommodate more water. 

“It’s the best of both worlds,” says Graeber, who is now a principal investigator at Humboldt University in Berlin. “The hydrogel can store a lot of water, and the salt can capture a lot of vapor. So it’s intuitive that you’d want to combine the two.”

Time to load

But the MIT team found that others reached a limit to the amount of salt they could load into their gels. The best performing samples to date were hydrogels that were infused with 4 to 6 grams of salt per gram of polymer. These samples absorbed about 1.5 grams of vapor per gram of material in dry conditions of 30 percent relative humidity. 

In most studies, researchers had previously synthesized samples by soaking hydrogels in salty water and waiting for the salt to infuse into the gels. Most experiments ended after 24 to 48 hours, as researchers found the process was too slow, and not very much salt ended up in the gels. When they tested the resulting material’s ability to absorb water vapor, the samples soaked up very little, as they contained little salt to absorb the moisture in the first place. 

What would happen if the material synthesis was allowed to go on, say, for days, and even weeks? Could a hydrogel absorb even more salt, if given enough time? For an answer, the MIT team carried out experiments with polyacrylamide (a common hydrogel) and lithium chloride (a superabsorbent salt). After synthesizing tubes of hydrogel through standard mixing methods, the researchers sliced the tubes into thin disks and dropped each disk into a solution of lithium chloride with a different salt concentration. They took the disks out of solution each day to weigh them and determine the amount of salt that had infused into the gels, then returned them to their solutions. 

In the end, they found that, indeed, given more time, hydrogels took up more salt. After soaking in salty solution for 30 days, hydrogels incorporated up to 24, versus the previous record of 6 grams of salt per gram of polymer. 

The team then put various samples of the salt-laden gels through absorption tests across a range of humidity conditions. They found that the samples could swell and absorb more moisture at all humidity levels, without leaking. Most notably, the team reports that at very dry conditions of 30 percent relative humidity, the gels captured a “record-breaking” 1.79 grams of water per gram of material. 

“Any desert during the night would have that low relative humidity, so conceivably, this material could generate water in the desert,” says Díaz-Marin, who is now looking for ways to speed up the material’s superabsorbent properties. 

“The big, unexpected surprise was that, with such a simple approach, we were able to get the highest vapor uptake reported to date,” Graeber says. “Now, the main focus will be kinetics and how quickly we can get the material to uptake water. That will allow you to cycle this material very quickly, so that instead of recovering water once a day, you could harvest water maybe 24 times a day.” 

This research was supported, in part, by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable  Energy and the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

###

Written by Jennifer Chu

Paper: “Extreme Water Uptake of Hygroscopic Hydrogels Through Maximized Swelling-Induced Salt Loading”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202211783

 

---

JOURNAL

Advanced Materials

DOI

10.1002/adma.202211783 

ARTICLE TITLE

“Extreme Water Uptake of Hygroscopic Hydrogels Through Maximized Swelling-Induced Salt Loading”

 Genome editing used to create disease resistant rice

Finding can increase yield of a crop that feeds half the world

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

 

IMAGE: RICE BLAST IN A CALIFORNIA RICE CROP. US AND CHINESE RESEARCHERS USED CRISPR GENOME EDITING TO CREATE A HIGH-YIELDING RICE VARIETY RESISTANT TO THIS MAJOR FUNGAL PEST. view more 

CREDIT: UCANR

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and an international team of scientists used the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas to create disease resistant rice plants, according to a new study published in the journal Nature June 14.

Small-scale field trials in China showed that the newly created rice variety, developed through genome editing of a newly discovered gene, exhibited both high yields and resistance to the fungus that causes a serious disease called rice blast. Rice is an essential crop that feeds half of the world’s population. 

Guotian Li, a co-lead author of the study, initially discovered a mutant known as a lesion mimic mutant while working as a postdoctoral scholar in Pamela Ronald’s lab at UC Davis. Ronald is co-lead author and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center. 

“It’s quite a step forward that his team was able to improve this gene, making it potentially useful for farmers. That makes it important,” Ronald said. 

The roots of the discovery began in Ronald’s lab, where they created and sequenced 3,200 distinct rice strains, each possessing diverse mutations. Among these strains, Guotian identified one with dark patches on its leaves. 

“He found that the strain was also resistant to bacterial infection, but it was extremely small and low yielding,” Ronald said. “These types of ‘lesion mimic’ mutants have been found before but only in a few cases have they been useful to farmers because of the low yield.”

Working with CRISPR

Guotian continued the research when he joined Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China. 

He used CRISPR-Cas9 to isolate the gene related to the mutation and used genome editing to recreate that resistance trait, eventually identifying a line that had good yield and was resistant to three different pathogens, including the fungus that causes rice blast. 

In small-scale field trials planted in disease-heavy plots, the new rice plants produced five times more yield than the control rice, which was damaged by the fungus, Ronald said.

“Blast is the most serious disease of plants in the world because it affects virtually all growing regions of rice and also because rice is a huge crop,” Ronald said. 

Future applications

The researchers hope to recreate this mutation in commonly grown rice varieties. Currently they have only optimized this gene in a model variety called “Kitaake” that is not grown widely. They also hope to target the same gene in wheat to create disease-resistant wheat. 

“A lot of these lesion mimic mutants have been discovered and sort of put aside because they have low yield. We’re hoping that people can go look at some of these and see if they can edit them to get a nice balance between resistance and high yield,” Ronald said. 

Rashmi Jain with the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology and Genome Center also contributed to the research, as did scientists from BGI-Shenzhen, Huazhong Agricultural University, Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Northwest A&F University and Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China; the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley; the University of Adelaide, Australia; and the University of Bordeaux, France.

Research in the Ronald lab was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Joint Bioenergy Institute funded by the US Department of Energy.

---

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06205-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Genome editing of a rice CDP-DAG synthase confers multipathogen resistance.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Jun-2023

COI STATEMENT

Guotian Li, Gan She and Xinyu Han are coinventors on a provisional patent application no. 202111041400.3 filed by Huazhong Agricultural University entitled ‘The OsRBL1 truncated protein and its application in balancing disease resistance and yield in rice’ that covers rbl1 and rbl1Δ12 lines. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

Light Pollution Special Issue

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

Light pollution is increasing around the globe, both in its intensity and geographic extent. Researchers are documenting its impact on ecosystems, human health, and culture, while warning that the wasted light has financial costs, environmental impacts, and is responsible for substantial greenhouse gas emissions. In a special issue of Science, five papers discuss the growing adverse impacts of light pollution, along with the regulatory and technological solutions that could help mitigate its effects.

Artificial light at night has variable and complex impacts on plants, animals, and entire ecosystems, according to a paper by Annika Jägerbrand and Kamiel Spoelstra. They discuss how species respond to light pollution in various ways that often differ from other species, making it difficult to develop ways to mitigate the negative impacts of light across an ecosystem. Increasing light pollution is causing habitat loss, disruption of food webs, and declining insect populations.

In a second paper, Karolina Zielinska-Dabkowska and colleagues discuss how the human body responds to nocturnal light exposure. There are effects on visual, circadian, and neurobehavioral systems, due to exposure to urban streetlights, outdoor sporting arenas, and illuminated advertising. They highlight inequities in the levels of exposure to light pollution experienced by different human populations, and the cultural impacts of losing sight of the night sky.

In a third paper, Antonia Varela Perez discusses how professional and amateur astronomers are affected by light pollution. Rapidly increasing sources of pollution for astronomers include large constellations of satellites in orbit, radio-frequency interference, and the deployment of LED lighting that produces more blue light than earlier technologies. Varela Perez argues that locally designated dark sky areas provide benefits for tourism, but there is an urgent need for broader international regulations.

Miroslav Kocifaj and colleagues write in a fourth paper that researchers need better ways to measure and monitor artificial light at night to improve our understanding of light pollution’s causes and to develop mitigation strategies. They discuss how light pollution is measured from the ground and from space by remote sensing, using technologies including photometers, drones, and all-sky cameras. They argue that current data collection practices are affected by meteorological conditions, and that more information could be extracted from them if this is taken into account.

In a fifth paper, Martin Morgan-Taylor examines existing light pollution regulations in various jurisdictions and discusses how they can be improved. Morgan-Taylor suggests that better communication of the carbon emissions and economic waste of light pollution, along with an emphasis on safe but not excessive levels of outdoor lighting, could convince the public and commercial users to reduce the light pollution they generate.

---

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adi4552 

ARTICLE TITLE

Losing the darkness

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jun-2023

 SOS#SaveOurSharks

Overfishing is driving coral reef sharks toward extinction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

Five of the most common shark species living in coral reefs have declined 60% to 73%, according to a massive global study by Colin Simpfendorfer and colleagues. Some individual shark species were not found at 34% to 47% of the reefs in the survey. The likely cause, say the authors, is overfishing, which has removed both the sharks themselves and the prey they depend on. As shark numbers decline, ray species are increasing on the reefs, suggesting a shift in the top elasmobranch species in the communities. Simpfendorfer et al. surveyed 391 coral reefs in 67 nations and territories using 22,756 remote underwater video stations. They show that shark-dominated reefs persist in wealthy, well-governed nations and in protected marine sanctuaries. In areas of poverty and limited governance, rays dominate the reef communities. The estimated declines of these resident reef shark species meet the IUCN Red List criteria for Endangered status, the researchers note. In a related Perspective, David Shiffman discusses how the authors, under the Global FinPrint project, analyzed almost three years’ worth of raw video. The study is “the latest in a long line of papers showing that global-scale problems require huge and multidisciplinary teams,” Shiffman writes.

---

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ade4884 

ARTICLE TITLE

Widespread diversity deficits of coral reef sharks and rays

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jun-2023

Wide-ranging report warns of shark extinction risk

BY JARED GANS 

THE HILL

- 06/16/23

A team of researchers analyzing almost 400 coral reefs found significantly declining numbers of certain shark species, warning that they face a risk of extinction because of overfishing.

The researchers released a report in the academic journal Science on Thursday after analyzing the presence of five common species of sharks that live by coral reefs. They surveyed 391 reefs across 67 countries and territories using almost 23,000 underwater video stations.

The report states that the researchers found global declines between 60 and 73 percent for the five species, and individual shark species were not detected in 34 to 47 percent of reefs.

The decline in shark species has also caused rays to increasingly dominate these reefs, having further implications for the ecosystem at large.

The researchers reviewed four key ray species — yellow and southern stingrays in the Atlantic, and blue spotted mask and blue spotted ribbontail rays in the Indo-Pacific region — and found that their populations only increased with the depletion of one or more shark species.

The report also states that the depletion levels of the shark species were closely tied to socioeconomic and management factors of their environment.

Reefs are more likely to be dominated by sharks in wealthy, well-governed countries and in marine protected areas or shark sanctuaries, where targeted shark fishing and trade is prohibited. However, countries struggling with poverty and poor governance were more likely to have reefs dominated by rays.

The report states that previous studies of reef sharks and rays have been geographically limited, only finding high abundances or local extinction among surveyed reefs. But this study evaluates the global extinction risk for the shark species.

The researchers concluded that reef shark species are at a much higher risk of extinction than previously thought. All major reef shark species have declined enough that they qualify as endangered under the standards set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an international organization that works to promote sustainability and conservation efforts.

The report did state that the potential to rebuild the shark populations is high if protected areas or stronger fishing management are implemented in a region.

“This study builds the case that species-specific reef shark management provides the best way forward for conservation and rebuilding of reef sharks in places where they have declined, among nations with the desire and capacity to do so,” the report states.

Carbon mitigation payments can make bioenergy crops more appealing for farmers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: FAHD MAJEED (PICTURED, WITH MISCANTHUS) AND MADHU KHANNA, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, STUDIED THE EFFECT OF CARBON MITIGATION PAYMENTS ON BIOENERGY CROP PROFITABILITY. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

URBANA, Ill. — Bioenergy crops such as miscanthus and switchgrass provide several environmental benefits, but low returns and profit risks are barriers for investment by farmers. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows that carbon mitigation payments could increase net returns and reduce income risk, potentially enticing more farmers to grow these crops.

“We were interested in looking at the returns to farmers and the risks to farm income of adopting bioenergy crops compared to conventional corn and soybean crops. We also wanted to look at the effects of paying farmers for the carbon mitigation services from these crops and how that would impact returns and risks,” said Madhu Khanna, Alvin H. Baum Family Chair and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE). She is also the ACES Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) and co-director of the Center for the Economics of Sustainability (CEOS), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the U. of I. 

“There are two main carbon mitigation benefits from bioenergy crops: First, bioenergy crops have deep roots that sequester more soil carbon than conventional crops. And second, the harvested biomass can be used to produce cellulosic biofuel to replace fossil fuels,” explained Fahd Majeed, a postdoctoral research associate at iSEE and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Center for Advanced Bioenergy and BioProducts Innovation (CABBI) at the U. of I. Majeed conducted the research as a doctoral student in CEOS.  

Potential biomass profitability and return riskiness, along with the subsequent carbon mitigation potential of these crops, varies spatially due to weather-related yield risk and relative returns from conventional crops. Policies aimed at incentivizing farmers to convert cropland to bioenergy crops will need to address return riskiness along with high upfront costs and long establishment periods.

“Some farmers may be risk-averse and prefer lower but more stable profits, while others may be risk-neutral and prefer higher profits regardless of risk; however, this information may not be known to a policymaker,” Majeed noted. “Our analysis allows us to compare and rank risky returns from bioenergy crops and conventional crops when farmer risk preferences are unknown.” 

The study, funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and CABBI, employed a biogeochemical model to simulate yields of bioenergy crops (miscanthus and switchgrass) and conventional crops (corn and soybean) under 30 years of randomized weather conditions. The researchers performed the analysis for 2,122 counties in the rainfed region of the United States, on or east of the 100th meridian. For conventional crops, they included corn-corn or corn-soybean rotation and till versus no-till practices.

They combined the yield analysis with an economic model estimating crop prices and carbon mitigation payments to gauge the appeal to different types of farmers across locations.

As both bioenergy and conventional crops vary in returns and riskiness across biomass and carbon prices, the researchers examined bioenergy crop profitability at biomass prices of $40 and $60 per metric ton and carbon payments of $0, $40, and $80 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). They found that bioenergy crops would not be profitable without carbon payments at lower prices. With carbon mitigation payments, these crops would appeal to risk-averse farmers; that is, farmers who are willing to accept slightly lower but less variable returns relative to conventional crops. At the higher biomass price of $60 per metric ton, carbon mitigation payments increase returns and reduce riskiness such that growing bioenergy crops would appeal to farmers regardless of risk preference.

Further, comparing the two bioenergy crops, the researchers found that miscanthus would be preferred over switchgrass by farmers in the Midwest, while switchgrass would be preferred over miscanthus by farmers in the southern states. This is due to spatial differences in the expected yield, carbon mitigation potential, and costs across bioenergy crops, the researchers said. 

Overall, carbon mitigation payments can make bioenergy crops more appealing to farmers, but payments should be adapted to the varying potential yield, carbon mitigation, and riskiness of returns across regions.

“One policy implication from this study is that if you want to reduce risk, carbon credits are a good policy. But the incentives need to be tailored spatially; a uniform payment per acre of land across the whole region is not going to be the most effective. Carbon credits that vary across the region based on carbon mitigated will create differentiated incentives across the region compared to a uniform policy. The former will also be cost-effective in achieving an aggregate target for carbon mitigation,” Khanna said.

Currently, carbon mitigation payments are primarily facilitated through voluntary markets where companies and other organizations can purchase credits to meet their carbon reduction goals. Such markets can be supplemented with government programs to incentivize bioenergy crop production, the researchers noted.

Editor’s Notes:

The paper, “Carbon mitigation payments can reduce the riskiness of bioenergy crop production,” is published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association [DOI: 10.1002/jaa2.52]. Authors include Fahd Majeed, Madhu Khanna, Ruiqing Miao, Elena Blanc-Betes, Tare Hudiburg, and Evan DeLucia.

Funding was provided by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Grant/Award Number: 2017‐67019‐26283; Hatch Project Number, Grant/Award Number: ALA011‐1‐ 17002; and the U.S. Department of Energy,Grant/Award Number: DE‐SC0018420

The College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois has top-ranked programs, dedicated students, and world-renowned faculty and alumni who are developing solutions to the world’s most critical challenges to provide abundant food and energy, a healthy environment, and successful families and communities. 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

DOI

10.1002/jaa2.52 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Carbon mitigation payments can reduce the riskiness of bioenergy crop production

Holistic management is key to increase

carbon sequestration in soils

Increased carbon sequestration in soil to help mitigate climate change can only be achieved by a more holistic management

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: MICROSCALE VIEW ON PARTICULATE ORGANIC MATTER (POM), WITH NICELY VISIBLE PLANT CELL STRUCTURES WHICH REPRESENT THE CARBON STORED IN THE SOILS. view more 

CREDIT: CARSTEN W. MÜELLER

Increased carbon sequestration in soil to help mitigate climate change can only be achieved by a more holistic management. This is the conclusion from an opinion paper conceptualized by a team led by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig University, the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the University of Copenhagen. The authors developed a novel framework that can guide informed and effective management of soils as carbon sinks. The study has recently been published in Nature Communications.

A key question for land management is how to sustain and increase the vast amounts of carbon stored in soil to help mitigate climate change. In this respect, carbon associated with minerals that can persist for centuries to millennia has received specific attention as a potential management target.

Undifferentiated focus on this “mineral-associated” carbon, however, falls short of establishing soils as carbon sinks because various environmental factors, such as related to land use or specific soil types, render management of this carbon inefficient.

“We were puzzled by the overwhelming emphasis on mineral-associated carbon in the literature, whose context-independent valuation certainly hampers informed and targeted management of soils as carbon sinks,” says Dr Gerrit Angst, lead author of the article from iDiv, Leipzig University, and the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The international author team, comprised of researchers from Germany, the Czech Republic, the United States, and Denmark thus developed a framework for the contextualization of management strategies that considers the diversity and complexity of soils.

Synergies with soil health and biodiversity

The framework specifically highlights the relevance of “labile” carbon, which typically remains in the soil for days to a few years, as a management target in various environmental contexts. For example, the capacity of some soils to accumulate rather stable, mineral-associated carbon is very low; some soils also feature conditions that hamper the formation of stabilized carbon but favor the accumulation of labile carbon.

Management that is aimed at increasing and perpetuating labile carbon in such soils will be more effective in increasing carbon sequestration than that focused on stabilized carbon.

“We cannot overemphasize the need to consider context-dependent environmental conditions for an effective management of soils as carbon sinks, which constrain whether management should target labile or stabilized carbon, or both,” explains Angst.

Contextualization of management strategies within the novel framework can be expected to maximize carbon sequestration in soil and generate synergies with related management targets, such as related to soil health, biodiversity, or crop performance. Senior author of the study, Prof Carsten W. Mueller from the University of Copenhagen concludes:

“Only if we see soils as a complex, holistic system with its specific chemical, physical, and biological features, will we be able to successfully manage them in a rapidly changing environment.”

 

Original publication:
(Scientists with iDiv affiliation in bold)

Angst, G., Mueller, K.E., Castellano, M.J., Vogel, C., Wiesmeier, M., Mueller, C.W. (2023):  Unlocking complex soil systems as carbon sinks: multi-pool management as the key. Nature Communications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38700-5

Contact:

Dr Gerrit Angst
Experimental Interaction Ecology
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Leipzig University

Institute of Soil Biology and Biogeochemistry

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Phone: +49 341 9739179
Email: gerrit.angst@idiv.de
Web: www.idiv.de/en/profile/1575.html

---

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-38700-5 

ARTICLE TITLE

Unlocking complex soil systems as carbon sinks: multi-pool management as the key

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Jun-2023