Thanks for posting, Andrew. Marin Carbon Project (MCP) has gotten a lot of attention for dramatic documented results with compost application on rangeland. I think these results beg the question of *how that carbon is sequestered, *though. Is it from the actual mass of carbon in the applied compost? No, and if that were the mechanism then the staggering volume of compost required would be unfeasible.
The message that unfortunately doesn't come through in MCP's web page is about biodiversity. Successful application of compost works as an inoculation of a whole web of organisms - bacteria, fungi, arthropods and worms - which populate healthy soil and cycle nutrients and carbon in symbiosis with plant roots. Given that this biodiverse community belowground has the function of sequestering carbon, why not include animal life in the mix? A California rangeland should not restrict its aboveground population to the four-wheelers and men with clipboards seen in MCP's web page. The role of small animals, birds and ruminants are integral to the cycling of nutrients and carbon; it's been pointed out that without animals all nutrients would flow endlessly downhill. Ecological balance on the land developed from the co-evolution of all these species. My concern here is that the benefits of compost application should not be considered in isolation. Brian On Sunday, December 27, 2015 at 4:04:06 PM UTC-5, Andrew Lockley wrote: > > Poster's note : please do follow the 'read more' links online, where > you'll find full papers and much additional information > > http://www.marincarbonproject.org/marin-carbon-project-science > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
