Managing soils for negative feedback to climate change and positive impact on food and nutritional security
This paper by Dr. Rattan Lal detailing the scope of nature-based climate solutions, including but not limited to grasslands and soils. Findings show that “the soil C sink capacity, between 2020 and 2100, with the global adoption of best management practice which creates a positive soil/ecosystem C budget, is estimated at 178 Pg C for soil, 155 Pg C for biomass, and 333 Pg C for the terrestrial biosphere with a total CO2 drawdown potential of 157 ppm.”
Soil Carbon Sequestration in Grazing Lands: Societal Benefits and Policy Implications
This paper from 2010 is a compilation of previous studies on grazing lands and carbon drawdown which themselves date from the 1990s. It shows that grazing lands/rangelands are major stores of terrestrial carbon, occupying approximately 3.6 billion hectares and accounting for about one-fourth of potential carbon (C) sequestration in world soils. Drawdown rates via grazing and on restored semi-arid savanna are reported to be as high as 2.75 tons per hectare per year.
Emerging land use practices rapidly increase soil organic matter
This paper studies three farms converted from cropland to management intensive grazing. “Farms accumulated C at 8.0 Mg ha−1 yr−1, increasing cation exchange and water holding capacity by 95% and 34%, respectively.”
Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems
This paper does a greenhouse gas life cycle analysis (LCA) comparison of two grazing finishing systems in the Upper Midwest, USA: feedlot finishing and Holistic Planned Grazing, which the authors refer to as adaptive multipaddock (AMP). It finds that AMP finishing improved soil organic carbon by 3.5 tons per hectare per year. This resulted in a net negative footprint of 6.6 kg of carbon dioxide equivalence per kg of carcass-weight.