Specially-designed soils could help combat climate change

The multi-disciplinary research team, including civil engineers, geologists, biologists and soil scientists, is led by David Manning, Professor of Soil Science at Newcastle University. “Scientists have known about the possibility of using soil as a carbon ‘sink’* for some time,” says Professor Manning. ”But no-one else has tried to design soils expressly for the purpose of removing and permanently locking up carbon. Once we’ve confirmed the feasibility of this method of carbon sequestration, we can develop a computer model that predicts how much calcium carbonate will form in specific types of soil, and how quickly. That will help us engineer soils with optimum qualities from a carbon abatement perspective. A key benefit is that combating climate change in this way promises to be cheap compared with other processes.”

Significant scope could exist to incorporate calcium-rich, carbon-locking soils in land restoration, land remediation and other development projects. Growing bioenergy crops on these soils could be one attractive option.

“The process we’re exploring might be able to contribute around 5-10% of the UK’s carbon reduction targets in the future,” says Professor Manning. “We could potentially see applications in 2-3 years, including a number of ‘quick wins’ in the land restoration sector.”

Notes for Editors

The 18-month research project “Engineering the Soil Carbon Sink: A Novel Approach to Carbon Emission Abatement” began in September 2007. It is receiving total EPSRC funding of just under £240,000.

Tarmac is providing the research team with access to a number of sites in order to carry out soil assessments. Renew Tees Valley is helping to link the team’s work to bioenergy crop production. The team will also work with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and a number of farmers/landowners to identify sites for study.

Calcium carbonate is a common, naturally occurring, completely stable mineral that would not be eroded by rain filtering through the soil. In many soils calcium carbonate occurs as coatings on pebbles and grains, and as grains associated with roots.

Calcium silicates are minerals that occur naturally in many different rocks and also in artificial materials such as concrete.