A Kansas State University professor already has received extraordinary recognition for helping to establish soil carbon sequestration as a promising method for mitigating greenhouse gases.
Yet Charles W. Rice, K-State professor of agronomy, is doing more than just sitting back and enjoying the Nobel Prize-winning status of his efforts. He and other researchers at K-State and its partner institutions already are hard at work pursuing the next phase of research that will find agricultural solutions to climate change.
"Across all sectors, agriculture could provide as much as 15 percent of the reduction needed to mitigate climate change," Rice said. "Agriculture is bigger than industry in terms of what it can mitigate. That's why agriculture has a role to play. It's not the only solution, but it's a significant portion of it."
Rice served with more than 2,000 other climate change experts from around the world to prepare the three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Rice and other climate change experts concluded that sequestering carbon in the soil is the best agricultural option for mitigating climate change during the next 20 to 30 years.
Researchers at K-State and the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, a collaboration of 10 institutions that K-State leads, are moving forward with research in this area. They are working to improve measurement of carbon levels in soil as well as exploring other areas of agriculture that affect greenhouse gases.
K-State and the consortium are researching new technologies for measuring carbon levels in the soil. With current methods, a soil sample has to go to a lab, be dried, ground, weighed and placed in a high-temperature oven before scientists can measure the amount of soil carbon. But Rice said that K-State is working with Los Alamos National Laboratory to evaluate the feasibility of using a laser that can more quickly and easily identify and measure many soil elements, including carbon, with minimal processing.
"You save on the drying, heating and weighing," Rice said. "You reduce the labor and time. It has a lot of potential."
K-State also is working with Veris Technologies in Salina on an infrared system to measure carbon. Rice said it operates on the same principle as the laser in that the soil doesn't have to be processed. Meanwhile, K-State is partnering with the Pacific Northwest and Brookhaven national laboratories to compare four new methods of testing carbon levels.
But soil carbon is just one part of the picture, Rice said. Nitrogen fertilizers and the wet conditions needed to produce crops like rice contribute nitrous oxide, and animal waste and sewer lagoons produce methane. As greenhouse gases, both methane and nitrous oxide are more potent than carbon dioxide, even though most research has focused on the latter, he said.
"There's a gap in research on gases like methane and nitrous oxide," Rice said. "There really is a lack of knowledge about how much nitrous oxide is released. Some of the lack of information is how no-till practices might affect the amount of nitrous oxide produced."
That's why K-State is using a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to collaborate with the University of New Hampshire to measure nitrous oxide released from no-till fields. Meanwhile, the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases will be looking at nitrous oxide in different crop systems. Rice said that K-State and the consortium also are working with legislators and policymakers to help them understand agricultural options in case a nitrogen credit market were established.
"It becomes extremely important to the consortium and to K-State to provide solid, scientific information for policymakers," Rice said.
Rice said that another important area for further research will be examining how the increased use of biofuels will affect agricultural efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases. With cellulosic ethanol, Rice said that the plant residue that keeps carbon in the soil will be removed. Researchers will have to find out how much can be removed without negatively affecting soil quality and how much additional water will be needed for processing and producing crops for cellulosic ethanol.
"If you start growing large amounts of biofuel crops, how much additional fertilizer do you need? Do you have to add a lot of nitrogen or phosphorous, and how will this affect water quality?" Rice said.
Exploring the potential of agriculture to mitigate greenhouse gases will take a global effort, Rice said. That's why the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases and K-State are exploring ways to collaborate with international research organizations. Rice said that means working with the U.S. State Department to arrange agreements with researchers in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Canada.
"It's important not only for sharing the research but also for making sure that there is some consistency globally," Rice said.