Scientists from UC Davis and Cornell University have discovered that applying crushed volcanic rock to croplands can store carbon in soil, even in drought-prone regions like California. This “enhanced rock weathering” could capture up to 215 billion tons of CO2 over 75 years if implemented globally. The technique’s success in arid conditions suggests potential for drylands, which cover 41% of Earth and are expanding due to climate change.
Field test finds carbon stored in soils even in dry climates.
Adding crushed volcanic rock to cropland could play a key role in removing carbon from the air. In a field study, scientists at the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University found the technology stored carbon in the soil even during an extreme drought in California. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.
Rain captures carbon dioxide from the air as it falls and reacts with volcanic rock to lock up carbon. The process, called rock weathering, can take millions of years — too slow to offset global warming. But by crushing the rock into a fine dust, rock weathering speeds up. Previous studies have estimated this “enhanced” rock weathering could store 215 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the next 75 years if spread across croplands globally.
But until now the technology hasn’t been field-tested in dry climates.
UC Davis researchers find adding crushed volcanic rock to farmlands can remove carbon dioxide from the air. This ‘enhanced’ rock weathering works even in dry climates. Credit: Amy Quinton/UC Davis
“These reactions require water,” said lead author Iris Holzer, a doctoral candidate in soils and biogeochemistry in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis. “Since we’re interested in the global carbon storage potential of enhanced weathering, we need to understand if it can work in these drier climates and if different measurement approaches are effective. We were excited to observe carbon removal in this environment.”
California’s Drylands: A Novel Frontier for Carbon Storage
Researchers applied crushed rock, both metabasalt and olivine, on 5 acres of a fallowed cornfield in the Sacramento Valley. They collected measurements during the winter months of 2020-2021. California was experiencing extreme drought at the time, with rainfall at 41% of its historical average.
The study found the plots with crushed rock stored 0.15 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare (2.47 acres) during the study compared to plots without crushed rock. Though researchers expect different weathering rates in different environments, if this amount of carbon was removed across all California cropland, it would be equivalent to taking 350,000 cars off the road every year.
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