With carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increasing in recent decades, there is a growing urgency to find strategies for capturing and holding carbon.
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Researchers from Kansas State University (K-State) are exploring how different farming practices can affect the amount of carbon that gets stored in soil. Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) and the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley, California, they analyzed soil from a cornfield in Kansas that had been farmed with no tilling for the past 22 years. During that time, the farm used a variety of different soil nitrogen management practices, including no fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, and manure/compost fertilizer. The results are published in the Soil Science Society of America Journal. "We were trying to understand what the mechanisms are behind increasing soil carbon storage using certain management practices," says Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, professor of soil and environmental…