Author Topic: How soil and compost can help the earth and your trees... Great read  (Read 987 times)

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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/dirt-save-earth-carbon-farming-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Most of the carbon moving into the soil comes from the air, not the compost. But, the compost appears to help the plants draw more carbon from the atmosphere than they otherwise would.

When it comes to mitigating climate change, soil scientists are most interested in occluded carbon — organic material, often in the form of dead microbes, trapped in clods of dirt. This type of carbon can potentially stay locked away for centuries. (Another carbon type, called labile carbon, continuously cycles among the atmosphere, plants and organisms in the soil.) It was precisely this more durable carbon, Silver discovered, that increased in the treated plots.

Her findings corresponded with a shift in recent decades in scientists’ understanding of how soil carbon forms. Previously they emphasized how dead organic material had to physically work its way into the soil. But the newer model stressed the importance of living plants. Their rootlets are constantly dying, depositing carbon underground, where it’s less likely to go airborne. And perhaps more important, as plants pull carbon from the air, their roots inject some of it into the soil, feeding microorganisms and fungi called mycorrhiza. An estimated 12,000 miles of hyphae, or fungal filaments, are found beneath every square meter of healthy soil. Some researchers refer to this tangled, living matrix as the “world wood web.” Living plants increase soil carbon by directly nourishing soil ecosystems.