By Georgine Yorgey

The question “How much additional carbon could cropland soils store through improved management?” led to a new resource being developed. Photo: Leslie Michael.

When you work at a land grant university, people sometimes reach out to you with questions.  I love this aspect of my job, as it often gives me a chance to bridge the divide between research and the real world.  In 2019, one of the questions I got most often was “How much additional carbon could cropland soils store through improved management?”

Over the years, we had already worked to gather the available evidence from across the Pacific Northwest region and help managers interpret that evidence.  But these questions provided us an excuse to re-visit the question. Working with colleagues from Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, we prepared a white paper summarizing the existing experimental and modeling evidence relating to the carbon sequestration potential of cropland soils in the Pacific Northwest. Continue reading →