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Carbon Loss
10/08/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook's weekly segment on
Global Climate Change. Today, Correspondent Curt Nickisch explains how croplands contribute
greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and how scientists
are working with farmers to reverse the process.
When pioneers first plowed the prairie, they exposed some of the best
quality soil in the world to the air. That allowed dead plant material
there to rot and release carbon dioxide, the most prevalent gas scientists
now believe responsible for global warming. Over the years, the amount of
soil carbon in the Great Plains dropped twenty-five percent. * That's a
trend South Dakota State University's Jim Doolittle wants to reverse.
DOOLITTLE: This is the soil chemistry lab.
Doolittle points to the machine here that gets the most use:
DOOLITTLE: It measures carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, using a dry combustion
furnace. That is allowing us to track carbon in our soil samples...
Plant scientists have always been interested in monitoring the organic
carbon content of the soil: a higher amount means better quality. But now
their research could be used to make sure cropland doesn't make global
warming any worse.
DOOLITTLE: It's beneficial not only to improve soil quality by increasing
organic matter, but also we're sequestering carbon for the global carbon
budget.
Keeping carbon in the soil would minimize agriculture's contribution of
C-O-2 to the atmosphere. What's more, Doolittle says farmers could even add
carbon to the soil by not tilling as much or planting crops to cover the
ground through the winter - reversing the trend of the last century and a
half.
In Brookings, South Dakota, this is Curt Nickisch.
The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory.
The special series on global climate change is supported by the New England
Science Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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