Carbon Sequestration
Atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse gases” serve to insulate the Earth making life possible. However, increasing evidence suggests that the earth is warming at an “unnatural” rate due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land. Atmospheric levels of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane have increased by 30 percent and 150 percent, respectively, since the mid 1700s when the Industrial Revolution began.
Plants and soil have extraordinary capacity to remove and store atmospheric carbon, thus diminishing greenhouse gases. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and use it to build leaves, stems and roots. As these plant parts die, they become buried in the soil, permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere unless the soil is broken through cultivation or mined for fossil fuels. Grasslands in North America have an enormous capacity to store atmospheric carbon and mitigate the negative impacts of greenhouse gasses. In South Dakota alone, the restoration of 4 million acres of marginal cropland to grassland would remove over 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents from the atmosphere over 80 years!
Carbon sequestration through grassland restoration offers advantages to energy companies seeking offsets by reducing risks and diversifying reduction portfolios. Because most of the carbon in grasslands is stored beneath the ground, it is not susceptible to loss from fire, drought and disease. Grassland restoration also buffers investments made in forest carbon sequestration projects in the southern United States and in the tropics.
Agricultural producers benefit from carbon sequestration by soil quality improvement, diversification of income sources and by making economic use of grass in ways that do not diminish the soil-sequestering function, like haying, grazing and biofuel harvest. In addition to the benefits of reducing greenhouse gases, carbon sequestration has the potential to develop into another economic tool to build quality soils which serves our best national and international interests in the long-term.
Learn more about DU's programs involving Carbon Sequestration....
Other Grassland Benefits