Paper: “Soil management practices can contribute to net carbon neutrality in California,” 2024 Environ. Res. Lett. 19 064034.
Research Team: Alan V Di Vittorio, Maegen B Simmonds, Andrew Jones, Whendee L Silver, Benjamin Houlton, Margaret Torn, Maya Almaraz, and Peter Nico
Findings: We show that with implementation areas of 15% or 50% of private cultivated land, grassland, and savanna in California, soil conservation practices alone can contribute 1.42.1% (−1.8−2.7 Mt CO eq y−1) and 4.66.9% (−6.0−8.9 MtCO2eq y−1) of the additional emissions reduction needed (beyond previous targets) to meet the 2045 net neutrality goal (−129.3 Mt CO2eq y−1), respectively, on an average annual basis, including climate uncertainty. Including enhanced silicate rock weathering (EW) in these scenarios increases the total contributions of management practices to 4.15.6% (−5.2−7.3 Mt CO eq y−1) and 13.518.6% 2.5 −3.2 2 8.2 (−17.5−24.2 Mt CO2eq y−1), respectively, of this reduction. This highlights that the extent of −10.7 implementation area is a major factor in determining benefits and that EW has the potential to make a real contribution to net reduction targets. Results are similar across climate cases, indicating that contemporary field data can be used to make future projections.
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