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Farming with Crops and Rocks to Address Global Climate, Food and Soil Security

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Farming with Crops and Rocks to Address Global Climate, Food and Soil Security PERSPECTIVE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0108-y Farming with crops and rocks to address global climate, food and soil security David J. Beerling 1*, Jonathan R. Leake 1, Stephen P. Long 2,3,4, Julie D. Scholes1, Jurriaan Ton 1, Paul N. Nelson 5, Michael Bird 5, Euripides Kantzas1, Lyla L. Taylor 1, Binoy Sarkar 1, Mike Kelland1, Evan DeLucia2,3, Ilsa Kantola2, Christoph Müller 6, Greg H. Rau7 and James Hansen8 The magnitude of future climate change could be moderated by immediately reducing the amount of CO2 entering the atmo- sphere as a result of energy generation and by adopting strategies that actively remove CO2 from it. Biogeochemical improve- ment of soils by adding crushed, fast-reacting silicate rocks to croplands is one such CO2-removal strategy. This approach has the potential to improve crop production, increase protection from pests and diseases, and restore soil fertility and struc- ture. Managed croplands worldwide are already equipped for frequent rock dust additions to soils, making rapid adoption at scale feasible, and the potential benefits could generate financial incentives for widespread adoption in the agricultural sector. However, there are still obstacles to be surmounted. Audited field-scale assessments of the efficacy of CO2 capture are urgently required together with detailed environmental monitoring. A cost-effective way to meet the rock requirements for CO2 removal must be found, possibly involving the recycling of silicate waste materials. Finally, issues of public perception, trust and accep- tance must also be addressed. ising concentrations of atmospheric CO2, and other green- needed for meeting the United Nations targets requires rapid phas- house gases (GHGs) emitted by human activities, are already ing out of fossil fuel emissions and the deployment of scalable having substantial adverse climate impacts that threaten approaches for CO2 removal (CDR) from the atmosphere with so- R 1,2 global food security . These impacts include more intense heat called negative CO2 emissions in the second half of the twenty-first waves and droughts, as well as more extreme and variable rain- century7–9. The danger of sea-level rise with the loss of productive fall, floods and storms fuelled by latent energy in water vapour2. coastal marine and agricultural ecosystems, resulting displacement This situation is unfolding at a time of unprecedented increase in of people inland and effects of increased climate extremes, add 2,6 food demand linked to dietary changes and a growing population further urgency to the need to offset CO2 emissions . that may reach ~11 billion by 2100, with agriculture itself a grow- The twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United ing contributor to climate change2,3. Crop yields are being further Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in compromised by losses of arable top soil that exceed natural rates Paris marked a turning point in the climate change debate, with the of soil formation by an order of magnitude and the depletion of focus shifting from describing climate change to a commitment to nutrients such as phosphorus (P) and potassium (K)4. Soil nutrient seek innovative, sustainable solutions10. The aim of enhanced weath- stripping is being addressed with fertilizers, but these are produced ering is to accelerate the natural geological process of carbon seques- using finite resources that drive price inflation4. Here, we examine tration with the production of alkaline leachate that reduces ocean in detail one option to help provide the required increases in yields acidification. It is achieved by modifying the soils of intensively man- while reversing the negative impact of agriculture on sustainability aged croplands with crushed calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg)- 11–13 and climate change. bearing rocks . Besides removing CO2 from the atmosphere, we Action on climate change is essential given that the global mean discuss how this strategy has the potential to also rejuvenate soils, temperature, already more than 1 °C above the pre-industrial level, stabilize soil organic matter, improve crop yields, conserve geologi- will exceed the 1.5 °C aspirational limit set by the United Nations cal fertilizer resources and benefit the marine environment. Paris Agreement5 within 30 years with the recent warming rate of 0.18 °C per decade6. Further warming is ‘in the pipeline’ because Carbon capture of Earth’s present energy imbalance, thermal inertia in the ocean Enhanced weathering accelerates CO2 reactions with minerals con- response and slowly amplifying climate feedbacks that include tained in globally abundant, Mg- and/or Ca-rich rocks, a process 6 ice-sheet melt . The continued response of the climate system to that naturally moderates atmospheric CO2 and stabilizes climate increased GHGs, and the practical difficulties of transitioning on geological timescales. In soils, the chemical breakdown of car- to carbon-free energy, makes even a more lenient 2 °C warming bonate and silicate rocks is accelerated during aqueous reactions 5 target challenging. Consequently, effective mitigation policy within the elevated CO2 environment of the soil, releasing base 1Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. 2Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA. 3Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA. 4Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. 5College of Science and Engineering and Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. 6Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. 7Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. 8Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. *e-mail: [email protected] NATURE PLAnts | www.nature.com/natureplants © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. PERSPECTIVE NATURE PLANTS Applied basalt or mill ash, CO from respiration of roots which also contains K 2 and other soil organisms and other nutrients CaSiO + 2CO + 3H O 3(s) 2(g) 2 Deposition and Weathering sequestration 3H O + CO + H SiO + Ca2+ + 2HCO – 2 2(g) Enhanced crop vigour and yield 4 4(aq) (aq) 3 (aq) CaCO + SiO due to greater uptake of Si, Ca, 3(s) 2(s) K and micronutrients Enhanced root growth due to Enhanced ocean alkalinity improved pH, nutrient supply Weathering products in and growth of diatoms, and physical conditions surface and groundwater runoff foraminifera and corals (less N, higher Si:N ratio) Fig. 1 | Summary of the potential effects of weathering of crushed basalt or silicate-rich wastes, such as sugarcane mill ash, applied to croplands. 2+ 2+ – –2 cations (Ca and Mg ) and delivering bicarbonate (HCO3 ), and to 110–224 gCO2 m , with a CO2 capture efficiency of ~60% for the 2– 26 a lesser extent carbonate (CO3 ) anions via runoff to surface waters mass of wollastonite applied . This upper bound, however, is not and eventually the ocean. Enhanced weathering, therefore, uses likely to be representative of CO2 capture by weathering in the forest 26 the oceans to store atmospheric CO2 in these stable dissolved inor- soil, which remains to be quantified for this experiment . ganic alkaline forms (Fig. 1). Given that the oceans worldwide store Given that farmers routinely apply granular fertilizers and lime, around 38,000 PgC, > 45 times the current mass of C in atmosphere, annual applications of, for example, ground basalt (an abundant, their future storage capacity is not a limiting factor14. The residence weatherable Ca- and Mg-rich rock) is feasible at large scales with time of dissolved inorganic carbon in the global ocean is around existing farm equipment. Global cropland (arable, forage, fibre, fruit 100,000–1,000,000 years, making it essentially a permanent C stor- and so on) covers approximately 12 × 108 ha (12 million km2)27, and age reservoir on human timescales15. Silicate weathering on land an additional 1–10 × 108 ha of marginal agricultural land may be 28 can also sequester atmospheric CO2 without involving the oceans, available where basalt treatment could rejuvenate degraded soils . if soil pore water chemistry results in the precipitation of second- Effectively, nearly 11% of the terrestrial surface is managed for crop ary carbonate minerals from base cation release15. In this case, the production and this may offer an opportunity to deploy a means of precipitated carbonate becomes the sink for CO2 rather than ocean carbon sequestration at scale within a decade or two. Rapid deploy- alkalinity. Carbonate weathering on acidic agricultural soils can ment of CDR strategies is an essential requirement for significantly 16,17 lead to a net CO2 flux to air , and carbonate minerals lack silica offsetting carbon emissions in the latter half of the twenty-first cen- (Si) and most plant nutrient elements . The process of carbonate tury to avoid CO2 and temperatures peaking and then declining weathering on land thus delivers fewer benefits to climate, soils and with potentially adverse ecological and economic consequences8,23. crops. For these reasons, we focus on enhanced silicate weathering. A first assessment might be achievable in areas of high-intensity By adding alkaline leachate to the ocean, enhanced weathering agriculture where basalt, rock-crushing
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