Project Number: 3645-11000-002-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Apr 15, 2001
End Date: Apr 14, 2006

Objective:
1.Determine the importance of cool, wet soils in the northern Great Plains to fluxes of greenhouse gases in North America. 2. Examine how biochemical and microbial activity in these soils affect decomposition of plant residues and cycling of carbon and nitrogen between the land and the atmosphere. 3. Determine how crop and soil management practices alter the rate at which carbon and nitrogen are stored in soil or released as greenhouse gases. 4. Evaluate the benefits of integrating biofuel crops into corn-soybean rotations, relative to economic sustainability and the overall carbon inputs and outputs from the system. 5. Develop methods for quantifying soil carbon content.

Approach:
Soils of the northern Great Plains cycle carbon more slowly than in southern regions because of a combination of lower temperatures and greater moisture, which affect many soil processes. This environmental characteristic may enable cool, wet soils to sequester carbon in forms that are stable over long periods, offering a potentially important way of offsetting part of the well-documented increase in atmospheric CO2. Understanding the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the carbon and nitrogen cycles in these soils will lead to improvements in land management, including production of biofuels crops, that can offset greenhouse gases, provide alternatives to fossil fuels, and achieve agronomic and broad environmental benefits.