From policies to support carbon farming, to setting up local ‘soil museums’, governments need to do much more to protect the soil we rely on for growing food and a healthier life on Earth.
Woodland caribou of the Pipmuacan herd. The effects of predation and habitat loss have greatly contributed to the decline of caribou in southern Nitassinan.
(Stéphane Bourassa, Canadian Forest Service)
A realistic look at forest management on the Nitassinan of Pessamit, based on data from the Québec government’s forest inventories.
Small-scale farmers, organic producers and local markets receive a tiny fraction of farm bill funding.
Edwin Remsberg/VWPics/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Protecting old and mature trees is the simplest and least expensive way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere – but proposed logging projects threaten mature stands across the US.
Most food waste still goes into red bins of mixed waste bound for landfill. It’s using up precious landfill space and harming the environment when it could produce valuable compost and biogas instead.
Lake Couridjah, Thirlmere Lakes National Park in New South Wales.
Shutterstock
80% of carbon on land in stored in soil. Our new research investigated how erosion transports this carbon to the bottom of lakes, where it’ll never be released into the atmosphere.
Native grasses, long overlooked, have been shown to benefit cattle and diverse native animals.
Patrick Keyser
As environmental engineers, invasive caterpillars can have remarkable effects on water quality and soil conditions. But from a climate perspective they’re pretty much a nuisance.
Companies’ net-zero pledges count on vast expanses of forest to hold carbon so they can continue emitting.
AFP via Getty Images
Yes, trees and soils can absorb and store carbon, but the carbon doesn’t stay stored forever. That’s one of the problems with how net-zero plans for the climate are being designed.
Xiaoming Xu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Atul Jain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A new study provides a detailed way to calculate the climate impact of food production, which could lead to more sustainable farming policies and methods.
Organic vegetables at the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, Goleta, Calif.
Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Four out of five Americans regularly buy some kind of organic food. An expert on the industry says more federal support could greatly expand organic farming and its environmental benefits.
A bald eagle on Baranof Island in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images
The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, a focus of political battles over old-growth logging and road-building in forests for decades, has received new protection from the Biden administration.
Wild pigs are on every continent, except Antarctica. All up, they likely turn over the the same amount of soil as the area of Taiwan.
Soybeans sprout on an Illinois farm through corn stubble left on an unplowed field from the previous season – an example of no-till farming.
Paige Buck, USDA/Flickr
Policymakers want to pay farmers for storing carbon in soil, but there are no uniform rules yet for measuring, reporting or verifying the results. Four scholars offer some ground rules.
If problems in such schemes are not addressed, the credibility of soil carbon trading will be undermined. Ultimately the climate - and the planet - will be the loser.
Soil underpins Australia’s economy – yet since Europeans arrived, the natural asset has steadily been degraded. A new national plan aims to change that.