Sally Brown, BioCycle’s Senior Advisor, is a Research Professor at the University of Washington in the College of the Environment.

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Aerial photo of long-term research plots that receive King County (WA) biosolids to grow dryland wheat. Photo courtesy of King County

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Poulton, P., J. Johnston, A. Macdonald, R. White, D. Powlson. 2017. Major limitations to achieving “4 per 1000” increases in soil organic carbon stock in temperate regions: Evidence from long-term experiments at Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom. Global Change Biol.   DOI: 10.1111/gcb.14066

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Included in the broad category of EOM are materials that are very familiar: composts, digestates, biosolids, and manures. They all represent types of organic matter that are brought to the soil and used as amendments instead of grown in place, like cover crops. The term is used in the context of discussions of soil as a partial solution to climate change. More and more in the scientific literature you see recognition of soil carbon storage as a viable means to reduce atmospheric carbon and also enhance soil health. Healthy soils are also climate resilient soils.

The papers that I’ve read talk about this potential solution on a global scale. Global scale means big picture. Things that are included in these papers are planting more trees and cutting down fewer trees. Also mentioned are keeping grasslands in grass and managing the grazing on those lands to limit degradation. While many of the papers talk about biochar, it is most often mentioned as a way to restore old and tired tropical soils, not as a means to save humanity as a whole.

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Bossio, D.A., S.C. Cook- Patton, P.W. Ellis et al. 2020. The role of soil in natural climate solutions. Nature Sustainability 3:391-398

Levavasseur, F., B. Mary, B.T. Christensen et al. 2020. The simple AMG model accurately simulates organic carbon storage in soils after repeated application of exogenous organic matter. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst. 117:215-229

Take heart that use of EOMs are the best tools around for making soil an effective repository for carbon. Use this information to provide quantitative values for the benefits of what you do. Also use it to turn the discussion around from landfill diversion to soil regeneration.

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Often mentioned ways to increase soil carbon include no-till agriculture, use of cover crops, stopping deforestation, and better managed grazing. There are also some proposed solutions that are much less conventional. One of these is deep burial of carbon stocks. That is a fancy way of saying dig a hole and put stuff in it. Dig it deep enough and put enough stuff over it that in 100 years you can come back and find your buried treasure. This is one approach that will almost certainly keep that tree trunk intact for decades. It is also a lot like making less sophisticated landfills. If you focus on the surface soil and increasing carbon there, you get the added benefit of increased soil health. A healthy soil is a resilient soil, able to resist stresses like torrential downpours, drought and high winds — many of the changes that we are seeing with climate change. A resilient soil is more likely to be able to continue to grow high yielding plants. I am fine with burying logs, as long as you put your first focus on making that surface soil healthy.

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Peltre, C., B.T. Christensen, S. Dragon, C. Icard, T. Kätterer, S. Huot. 2012. RothC simulation of carbon accumulation in soil after repeated application of widely different organic amendments. Soil Bio Biochem 52:49-60

Long-term research plots at Hayden Farm in Maryland used for EOM studies conducted by the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Photo courtesy of Dr. Rufus Chaney

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AMG Model: The AMG is the next model to embrace EOMs. Here again, the authors (Levavasseur et al, 2020) look at a range of different types of EOM from as many long-term field trials that they could find. AMG puts soil carbon into different pools — stable and active. Here the h value represents the fraction of the added carbon that stays in the soil, at least for a while. The part that goes right to CO2 (i.e., emitted before it can get stored) is the 1-h fraction. That means that the higher the h the more likely the amendment increases soil carbon. Here are some of the h values (% of C remaining in soil) from the model:

Broadbalk field at the Rothamsted Experiment Station in the United Kingdom, where long-term experiments began in 1843, and continue today. Photo source: Rothamsted Experiment Station

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It almost rhymes. Figure everybody reading this knows that SOM stands for Soil Organic Matter. Figure that few of you know that EOM stands for Exogenous Organic Matter. I myself am a new convert to the term, but now I’m all in. Exogenous means “relating to or developing from external factors.” In the case of soil organic matter, it means putting stuff on the soil that you got from somewhere else. Think of it as the opposite of cover crops and stubble.

The vast majority of research and sampling on soil carbon has focused on the surface of the soil. The surface or “A” horizon is where most roots are and most organic matter is. There is also organic matter in the lower parts of the soil but this is rarely sampled. The first reason is because it is hard to dig down to 1 to 2 meters in soils. The second is that this portion of the soil stores less carbon and is expected to show very little response to what happens on the surface. A 2019 paper from the University of California Davis did dig deep. What they found was that growing cover crops — a recognized tool for increasing soil carbon — did in fact increase carbon at the top of the soil. At the lower depths, however, the soils with the cover crops lost carbon — even more carbon than the surface had accumulated. The authors found that only when compost (EOM and in this case composted poultry manure) was added along with cover cropping did the increases in the surface carbon hold up without losses in the subsoil. We don’t know if this happens in all soils. It happened for this one long-term study. The focus on soil as a carbon sink is on impact to the surface. As we get better at this (hopefully) we will also come to a better understanding of how what happens on the top can impact the bottom.

Papargyropoulou, E, R. Lozano, J.K. Steinberger, et al. 2014. The food waste hierarchy as a framework for the management of food surplus and food waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 76. 106 – 115. ISSN 0959-6526

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EOM is based on bringing organic matter to the soil from outside sources — materials that originated in soil but were moved off site and the residuals are brought back.

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The last paper I read on this topic (Poulton, et. al, 2017) was focused on whether the tools that we have to heal soils are realistic. Is the 4p1000 initiative pie in the sky or real in the dirt? The authors looked at increases in SOM from use of EOM (has a nice ring to it, I have to repeat that) from long-term field trials. Remember here that soils that are degraded will show increased organic matter with proper care that will eventually come into equilibrium. Average application rates for each 10-year time period were high — a total of 311, 402, and 176 tons/hectare. Biosolids and the biosolids compost were not applied or data wasn’t reported for the last time period. Table 1 shows the percent increases for regular application rates of the different amendments. Each percent is for a 10- year period. Trends were consistent — big percent increases at first that level off.

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With these solutions, implemented across oceans and continents, there is a potential to store 23.9 gigatons (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. To quote Bossio et al. (2020), “Soil carbon is important to land-based efforts to prevent carbon emissions, remove atmospheric carbon dioxide and deliver ecosystem services in addition to climate mitigation.” The papers I reviewed reference a number of initiatives where the goal is to make this a reality. One of them is the 4p1000. The name of that initiative comes from its goal to increase soil carbon (soil C) by 4% annually across the globe.

EOM is mentioned in these papers but it is buried deep (pun intended). EOM is not the first action item on the list. That is because if you go to fields in most of the world, they don’t have access to much of the EOM that many of us still consider waste. There are no digestates, composts or biosolids in areas of the world without sanitation or centralized waste collection. However, in areas where EOM is an option, very often there are mountains of it that no one has spoken for. I looked for more papers that focused on EOM and found a few. Here the emphasis was on how to model carbon storage in soils where managers/ farmers do have access to the range of EOM.  By using models, we can understand the  larger scale implications of EOM without the need to set up a new replicated field trial at each site (versus using only replicated field trials). Models take data from all available replicated field trials and synthesize them to come up with values that are robust and applicable to multiple fields and multiple types of EOM. This is the much preferred alternative to making stuff up. Let me tell you about two of these models.

There is a built in transfer of C from the resistant to the labile and humified pools. The speed of this transfer is determined in part by the clay content of the soil. The EOMs that are typical in our world have relatively high resistant organic matter, ranging from 38% of total C for a MSW compost to 85% for the biosolids. Then the model turns this into a rate of carbon accumulation in soils. The rate of C accumulation (tons of C ha-1 yr-1) for the EOM modeled based on an application of 2 tons ha-1 for 20 years (20 tons ha-1 cumulative loading) is:

You double the application rate (many of the sites included in the model had normal and 2x application rates) and the percent goes even more dramatically through the roof. Rather than broadcasting these results with a bullhorn, the authors conclude that there isn’t enough EOM to go around so we better come up with a Plan B. Early on in this column, I talked about how EOM is mentioned but buried deep in the big picture papers. That is because most of the world doesn’t have either MSW-based materials or municipal biosolids. That tells me two things.

RothC: The RothC model is named after the long-term field trial in Rothamsted in the United Kingdom. While the model is able to predict changes in soil C based on practices like fertilizer addition and tillage, recent work has added in the ability to predict changes based on EOM amendments. To do this, the researchers (Peltre et al, 2012) split each EOM type into fractions of labile (DPM), resistant (RPM) and humified (HUM). Labile materials will break down relatively quickly, resistant will put up more of a fight against decomposition, and humified are quite content to stay put as is.

There’s a lot of hype these days with storing carbon in soil. One that’s promoted is deep burial of carbon in the soil. Is that pie in the sky?