Along the Frontier Column
The “Next West:” Up in the Air
An inspiring western ranch project aims to reverse global warming.
By Courtney White, 3-17-10
In early March, I had the privilege of visiting a project in northern California that felt very much like a preview of the future.
If the current ‘New West’ is inexorably giving way to the ‘Next West,’ as so many ‘New Wests’ have done before, and if the region is in search of a new mission statement as a consequence, then clues to what’s coming might be found among the bright green grass of a small ranch in Marin County.
At the very least, it is certainly something new under the sun.
It’s called the Marin Carbon Project and its goal is nothing less than reversing global warming. That’s a tall order, of course, especially for one family, a few hundred acres, a small herd of cattle, and a handful of scientists.
The idea behind the project is simple: it aims to sequester excess amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in the ranch’s soil. This is important because we know that to reverse climate change we need to do two things: (1) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, by a lot; and (2) increase sequestration so that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere drops from its current level of 389 parts-per-million down to 350 ppm (or lower).
While the vast majority of current climate change legislation, regulation, activism, and proposed solutions focus on reducing emissions, the truth is these actions won’t avert a climate calamity by themselves (assuming they actually get implemented). That’s because we’re already over the 350 ppm threshold for CO2. The science is clear: we need to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere as well as reduce emissions.
That’s where the Marin Carbon Project comes in. Globally, there are only three major ‘sinks’ that can readily absorb excess (or ‘legacy’) CO2: the planet’s oceans, vegetation, and soils. The oceans are absorbing a great deal of CO2 right now – and acidifying as a result. This is not a good thing, for many reasons – and at some point the oceans will reach a saturation level. Vegetation – trees mainly – can take up a lot of CO2 but it can just as quickly release it back into the air via fires, decomposition, and clearing for agricultural activity, which means it isn’t a safe place to store carbon for long periods of time.
That leaves soils. By one estimate, three times more carbon is stored in the planet’s soils than in the atmosphere. Small increases in soil carbon content, research shows, can sequester large amounts of legacy CO2. In California, scientists estimate that an increase of 1 metric ton of carbon per hectare on 50% of the state’s rangelands could sequester 42 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. That’s almost equivalent to the total annual emissions from California’s commercial and residential sectors combined. An increase of 5 metric tons per year across California’s rangelands could nearly offset that Golden State’s entire transportation sector!
I don’t know about you, but I find this news both awesome and inspiring.
The partners in the Marin Carbon Project, including landowner and rancher John Wick, aim to expand and enhance the soil organic content of the ranch’s soils through innovative land management that includes cattle. In a nutshell, the goal is to grow more grass – the deeper the roots the better. They can do this with active cattle management, but they are also experimenting with compost applications to the soil.
Early results are promising. At a presentation I attended for a visiting delegation of academics from China, the lead researcher, Dr. Whendee Silver of UC Berkeley, reported that the carbon content of the sample plots had increased in only one year – suggesting that the goal of a net increase in sequestration of greenhouse gases (after deducting methane and CO2 production from the ranch) is possible.
Of course, more research is needed, as she said, before any definite conclusions can be drawn from this project.
But if this work holds up then all sorts of possibilities come into play. Nearly one-third of the planet’s land surface is rangelands. That’s a lot of potential CO2 sequestration. There are a lot of rangelands in the West too. What if they were ranched for carbon? And that’s just for starters. According to the leaders of the Marin Carbon Project, managing land for soil health produces a wide variety of co-benefits, including better wildlife habitat, an improved water cycle, and a local food economy (which reduces emissions).
At this point, all of this is a long shot. But as the West searches for a new mission statement to go along with its next ‘New West,’ it might consider its role in the fight against climate change. I don’t know if this is practical or possible yet, but it’s definitely worth talking about.
You can read Courtney’s entire series of columns, which are presented as a sequence, on his New West archive at www.newwest.net/courtneywhite. See the most recent columns below.
The New, Carbon West
Understanding the ‘New’ West: Whither the Public Lands?
The Geography of Hope
After the West’s New Gold Rush
New ideas haven't time to percolate at all before somebody is right in the middle of turning them into the latest gimmick for saving the earth.
Maybe this will solve some problems; but, kinda like adding iron to the oceans, we may come to rue the day.
I'm not trying to join with the chicken little crowd exactly; but as the availability of information has clearly outstripped human processing abilities, the notion of unintended consequences is becoming more and more unsettling.
Soil carbon storage is not exactly a new, untested idea. The obvious problem is simply that disturbance to the soil, like tillage, or even fire, will result in a rapid loss of soil carbon. The carbon stored in soils is still a part of the terrestrial carbon cycle and subject to re-entering the atmosphere. Promoting soil carbon storage will help, but it is not permanent storage. The safest plan is to leave the carbon locked up in the more stable geological carbon cycle. In other words, stop extracting the carbon! We are deceiving ourselves if we think we can continue to extract carbon-based fuels and then simply find a way to store it in the terrestrial or oceanic carbon cycle. Yes, we need a two pronged approach, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that stopping extraction is a necessary step. Drilling oil and digging coal (“clean coal” or otherwise) introduces more carbon to the terrestrial carbon cycle that CANNOT be permanently stored via land management practices.
Comment By the real mike, 3-17-10Natalie is absolutely correct. In terms of the climate change problem. there are really two types of carbon, biosphere carbon and fossil/geologic carbon. The problem is that we are converting too much fossil/geologic carbon, which is locked up and not a factor in the problem, into biosphere carbon, which is actively bouncing back and forth between the surface, the biomass, and the atmosphere and causing trouble when it spends too much time in the atmosphere impacting its insulating properties. Yes, it's theoretically a good thing to not cut old growth forests and to otherwise try to capture biosphere carbon in longlasting living or skeletal structures; but, comparatively speaking, biosphere carbon is always on the move within a fairly short timeframe. Even fossil/geologic carbon that happens to get exposed to the biosphere is pretty quickly consumed and converted by something, bacteria or fungus or whatever, and soil carbon really doesn't stay around long enough to be much help in comparison to stopping the extraction/exposure of fossil/geologic carbon in the first place.
I've heard Allan Savory make his pitch on soil carbon. It seems to primarily be more self-serving snake oil; but, my main worry is that it may end up just another distraction from getting down to the real task, which is finding ways to reduce the conversion of fossil/geologic carbon to biosphere carbon.
Very interesting. This article helped me understand the problem -- and potential solutions -- better.
Comment By bearbait, 4-09-10In hot forest fires, the release of soil carbon is huge. There was an ongoing, long term soil study in the Babyfoot Lake RNA of the Rogue-Siskiyou NF, that was involved in the 500,000 acre plus 2002 Biscuit Fire. Data from that research is still being gained, and the project was blessed with a lot of plots of long standing, and some were burned over hot, some not so hot, and others not burned over at all.
The hot fire burnover stats that boggled my mind were the loss of topsoil, up to three inches, leaving behind more or less a finer grade of gravel, and the carbon loss from the soil, which has been measured in tons per acre, and some at many tons per acre.
I believe the project is out of the Forestry School at Oregon State U. Probably some of it is on the net. But it does reinforce the idea that terrestrial carbon bounces around, as Weyerhaeuser research revealed when they were able to find an isotope of carbon that is of marine formation in ridge top trees, the attribution to that carbon being assigned to anadromous fish bringing it back to headwater streams in their bodies from their ocean feeding and subsequent demise in the stream, and their remains consumed by lots of critters, some of whom would leave scat on ridge tops. And then probably burned in a fire at some point, and where it lands, nobody knows.
I do wonder if the romance of society and fossil fuels dredged from the bowels of the earth will run a very short course in the timeline of our earth, and really only be a blip on the history of the place.
You can be a fatalist, and at last come to the conclusion that you don't have any idea of what this "living" deal is all about, and to what end, and all that light that arrives each day after a few billion years of travel, will "shed light" on the ......and then I just tell myself that if I don't have the answer it is probably because I don't know the question, and never will, along with a few hundred billion humans past, present, and future....at which time I realize my time would better be spent on the garden, at my little job, and having some fun before I croak, which will happen a whole lot sooner than a person would think as these days drain out of the months out of the years, and holy shit it is time to do the geriatric two step to the Comforting Arms of some high school drop out whose purpose in life is to drop you while changing the sheets....and at that time, do you really give a shit about fossil fuels and soybeans? NO! You probably are pissed you passed on a chance to go fishing long ago...or whatever..
So, like rock n roll, the most ardent environmental supporters are probably beginning to die off at an ever accelerating speed, and having to make the decision to burn or compost. Perhaps it was all a passing windmill for Sancho and the Don to peruse. Ancient literature all about renewable energy as a target for the lance.