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High tech research seeks climate change answers down on the farm

While Congress and the Obama administration consider climate change legislation, a group of researchers labor quietly at field test plots and on computers across the country in work that may offer answers for those decision makers in Washington and assist producers in making smart decisions to mitigate climate change on their own operations.

One such effort is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction through Agricultural Carbon Enhancement network (GRACEnet) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. GRACEnet is a research program to assess soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas (nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide) emissions mitigation through use of various agricultural management approaches.

The primary objective of the GRACEnet program is to identify and develop agricultural strategies to enhance soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is also out to provide a scientific basis for carbon credit programs, to reduce net emission of greenhouse gas and improve environmental quality.

That objective might be stated for officials in Washington. For the producer, it could be said the main goal of the program is to develop and evaluate new knowledge required to efficiently manage soil, fertilizer, and plant nutrients to achieve optimum crop yields, maximize farm profitability, maintain environmental quality and sustain long-term productivity.

GRACEnet also addresses the other greenhouse gases--nitrous oxide and methane--that may be emitted by agricultural practices. The study is pretty much an all encompassing one as it includes both grazing lands (range and pasture) and crop lands (irrigated and dryland).

The GRACEnet program is headquartered within the Soil Plant Nutrient Research Unit within the Natural Resources Research Center at the USDA/ARS Northern Plains Area Office at Fort Collins, Colo.

No matter the audience for the research, the program is out to do three things:

1. Evaluate status and direction of change in soil carbon for typical and alternative agricultural systems.

2. Determine net greenhouse gas emission (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) of current agricultural systems for typical and alternative agricultural systems.

3. Determine the environmental effects (water, air and soil quality) of agricultural systems developed to reduce greenhouse gas emission and increase soil carbon storage.

The program leader is Dr. Ron Follett, a veteran of more than 40 years in agricultural research. He coordinates a team of scientists from other ARS facilities as well as university settings and independent facilities in field studies at 32 locations across the U.S.

These locations range from the Rodale Institute farm trial plots at Kutztown, Pa., where the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in carbon sequestration in soil is taking place, to Prosser, Wash., where scientists there are studying trace gas fluxes from irrigated soils amended with anaerobic digested dairy manure.

At Fort Collins, Follett along with fellow ARS scientists Dr. Gary Varvel and Dr. Rob Mitchell, as well as ARS/University of Nebraska Adjunct Professor of Agronomy Dr. Ken Vogel, are researching improved forage and bioenergy plants and technologies for the central U.S. Follett, Varvel, Vogel and retired scientist John Kimble are also studying effect on soil carbon and soil aggregates on no-till corn after brome grass plantings in the Conservation Reserve Program.

"The sites we are working with have a lot of long-term, high-risk research," Follett said. "It's high risk because you have to go out there and study conditions that farmers have to deal with in the natural environment with the climate and other issues everyone else deals with. I've been hailed out and frozen out of my research over the years. In this study, it also means I've dug and been in a lot of soil pits looking for carbon."

The researchers use protocols for proper samplings of soil, trace gases and plants that are similar no matter where the researchers are across the network.

"Some of this will require special data collection equipment," Follett said. "The important thing to remember is that, while the locations are different and the conditions at those locations are different, the protocols for how we do this research will be consistent."

Similar, but different

While the actions of the scientists are similar across the country, the types of agricultural practices and products grown may be different.

For example, Follett is studying effects of cropland and rangeland management practices on soil carbon sequestration in the Great Plains. Closer to home, Follett points to his colleague, Dr. Stephen Del Grosso, who is studying ag greenhouse gas intensity through quantifying that intensity in field plots under different management practices and applying the information gathered into computer modeling projections of how those different practices impact that intensity.

"By having all these locations across the country, scientists can deal with the agricultural systems that are typical for their areas of the country--like long winters in the northeast and long summers in the south--and how we can deal with greenhouse gases in ways that will work in that part of the country. We are testing for local needs and reporting nationally."

Most of these studies are given 5 years of appropriated funds from the USDA/ARS budget to pay for the research; yet, Follett said the research usually continues after the appropriation ends.

The key to success for GRACEnet is that no matter where these climate change studies are taking place, researchers follow four location-specific scenarios that lead to their assessments of their studies:

1. Business as usual in production agriculture for various areas of the country. "That's our current practices. We need to measure them," Follett said. "We then need to measure those practices against the other three. On the Plains, that could be no-till wheat and fallow." Those other practices would be geared toward:

2. Maximizing carbon sequestration rate.

3. Minimizing net greenhouse gas emissions.

4. Maximizing environmental benefits by improving water, air, and soil quality.

"What we are trying to do is answer four questions," Follett said. "First, what is the carbon accumulation or loss rate under the current typical agricultural management practices farmers use in a given area? What can be done to reach the highest carbon sequestration rate at that location?

"We also have to answer the question, that since agriculture is a main source of nitrous oxide and methane to the atmosphere, what kind of practices can we develop to decrease the emission of these gases? Finally, what kind of management systems can producers use to sequester soil carbon and decrease greenhouse gas emissions while optimizing their farming operation? We have to ask that because it does no good to do all this and not give agriculture some benefit. We have to have practices that will really work for the producer."

Patience, please

If you are expecting a flood of new products to solve the paradox of feeding the world and keeping it sustainable to arrive at overnight because of this research, Follett advises patience.

"This data won't be collected overnight. This will take upwards of 10 years to collect. That's just the way carbon is. It's slow to express itself."

One of the requirements of the program is that all the information has to go into a database that DelGrosso and Follett oversee from their Fort Collins office.

The GRACEnet database is designed to provide easily accessible information on crop management, soils, weather, and gas fluxes that can be used for system model building and testing.

Specifically, data on fertilizer, tillage, water, and crop rotation management, soil carbon, nitrogen, water content, and temperature, crop yields and growth stages, nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide emissions, and other ecosystem variables are included, Follett said.

The GRACEnet database uses a Microsoft Excel template file, containing 20 worksheets to be populated with information from the participating ARS units. Researchers log in their findings at several different phases of research.

Populated worksheets are returned to Follett's Research Unit for visual inspection and outlier analyses, and then sent to the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment (formerly the National Soil Tilth Research Laboratory) at Ames, Iowa, to be included in a web accessible SQL database.

"One of the products of the database will be models that will allow us to project scenarios from results of test protocols across regions and, more broadly, across the country," Follett said.

From their research, Follett and the other GRACEnet scientists hope to develop four products that all those interested in soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation can use and trust.

1. A national database of GHG flux and C storage.

2. Regional and national guidelines of management practices (in the form of a decision aid) that reduce greenhouse gas intensity, applicable for use by producers, federal and state agencies, and C brokers.

3. Development and evaluation of computer models created to assess management effects on net greenhouse gas emission and carbon storage.

4. Summary papers for action agencies and policy makers, based on the current state of knowledge.

"This will be a series of decision tools that producers can use, and federal and state agencies as well," Follett said. "We want to compare these models to the models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others. This will take time. Even though we presently have close to 150 articles in referred journals and books, there's still work to do."

Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117, or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.

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