By Georgine Yorgey

Topsoil has often been referred to as the “thin skin” of our planet, essential for producing the food that feeds us. Because it’s not easy to create new topsoil, conserving the soil that we have is essential for maintaining our region’s agricultural productivity. Reducing tillage, and leaving residue on the soil surface, is a proven way to reduce erosion. As residues break down, they increase the concentration of soil organic matter at the surface of the soil and help to form soil aggregates—a composite of soil particles that clump or bind together, giving soil its structure. Soil that is aggregated in larger particles is less prone to being eroded by the wind. And soils with more organic matter also benefit the climate, by storing more carbon.

Planting the wheat cover crop in strips makes planting corn easier, as the planter does not encounter roots and leaves in the planting strip. Photo: Darrell Kilgore

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By Karen Hills

In non-irrigated areas that are too dry to support annual cropping, fallow (the practice of leaving land unplanted) preserves soil moisture for future crops. However, annual fallow combined with conventional tillage has resulted in a net decrease in soil carbon over time in our region, with negative impacts to soil health across large areas. And even when tillage is eliminated, it is very difficult to maintain soil carbon over time in a wheat-fallow system.  For this reason, the impact of climate change on the frequency of fallow in crop rotations has important future implications both for soil health and for opportunities for carbon sequestration.

Two papers published last year by Kaur et al. and Karimi et al. use modeling to project the impacts of climate change on dryland cropping systems. Continue reading →

By Georgine Yorgey

Farmer and long-time CSANR advisory committee member, Dale Gies. Photo: Sylvia Kantor.

What are the climate impacts of a given farm practice?  While we know lots of strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on farms, quantifying that impact can be difficult.  However, there is at least one farm in our region – one that uses some pretty neat practices – for which scientists have attempted to answer that question.  And the farmer just happens to be a long-time member of the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources’ advisory committee, Dale Gies. Continue reading →

By Karen Hills

Biochar as a soil amendment has been the subject of much attention in recent years because of its ability to sequester carbon and to improve aggregation, water holding capacity, and organic matter content of soil amended with it (Lehmann, 2007; Marris, 2006). A recent post discussed what’s needed to economically produce forest to farm biochar. In contrast, researchers at Washington State University are investigating what we could call waste to farm biochar. Waste to farm biochar, if deployed on a larger scale, could offer a two-part benefit – removal of wood from the municipal solid waste stream and creation of a valuable product from this wood. In recent work, researchers are looking at two possible wastes that could be made into biochar: wood-based fractions of municipal solid waste and the large woody material remaining after compost production—referred to as “compost overs.”

Figure 1: Images of the woody biomass sources used to create biochar for this project, including compost overs and wood-based products from municipal solid waste. (source: WTFT 2015-2017 report; photo credit: M. Ayiania)

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By Kristin Trippe, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit

Farmers across the globe are grappling with the challenges of a changing climate. In the Pacific Northwest, loss of snow pack has diminished the availability of water resources, causing increased drought stress (see this article, for example). Our program is focused on biochar, a rather non-descript product that can help farmers both sequester carbon and prolong the availability of soil moisture in their agricultural soils to address drought stress.

Biological Science Technicians Sarah Light (left) and Stephanie Chiu (right) collect soil cores from soil amended with biochar to determine if biochar can help prevent drought. Photo: Claire Phillips, USDA ARS FSCRU.

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