Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Agriculture

Impacts of cover cropping on soil health in an Urban farm in the Mid-South

Given that agricultural practices are a major source of GHGs (greenhouse gas emissions), there has been much research into how agricultural management regimes might improve carbon sequestration in soils in support of long-term carbon sequestration benefits. One management strategy to improve soil health and GHG capture in agriculture is the use of cover crops. Cover crops have been shown to increase organic carbon stocks in soils but there are major knowledge gaps in cover crops facilitate these carbon stock increases, specifically the mechanisms by which cover crops generate recalcitrate soil organic matter and alter soil pore structure.

Drs. Shawn Brown and Jennifer Mandel were awarded support from the joint Department of Energy EMSL-JGI program MONet (Molecular Observation Network) for their proposal entitled Impacts of cover cropping on soil health in an Urban farm in the Mid-South. This award will provide ~$20,000 in services including high-resolution organic matter characterization using Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometry, soil pore network characterization using X-ray computed tomography (XCT), and annotated soil metagenomes to support their ongoing work examining the interactions between cover crop usage and soil health/biodiversity in the Mid-South.

This work will expand our understanding of soil ecosystem processes associated with cover crop utilization, particularly in the United States MidSouth where there are few studies on soil processes in agriculturally relevant systems.

For more information on this project, contact them at spbrown2@memphis.edu or jmandel@memphis.edu.