At an April 15 meeting of the Bilateral Working Group on Climate Change, in Ottawa, Canada, representatives from the United States and Canada agreed to expand and intensify their cooperative efforts in the development of integrated carbon cycle research. The efforts are toward building a coordinated North American Carbon Program. The working group was established by the United States and Canadian governments.
At the meeting, Charles W. Rice, professor of soil microbiology at K-State and director of the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, made a presentation with Carlos Monreal of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada about developing reliable methods to estimate soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gases in U.S. and Canadian agroecosystems.
Research at K-State and other universities has shown that successful implementation of soil carbon sequestration strategies can lower the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and help improve valuable cropland.
K-State also is the lead institution in the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, which seeks to mitigate greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through carbon sequestration strategies. The federally-supported consortium is comprised of expert scientists from K-State, Colorado State University, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, Montana State University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Texas A&M University System, University of Nebraska and Battelle-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in conjunction with research groups within the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service and Natural Resource Conservation Service.
Rice and Monreal outlined areas of cooperation between Canada and the consortium, which include the measurement, monitoring and verification of soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as providing the data, models and understanding to assess the potential for soil carbon sequestration.
Rice said the consortium and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a Canadian government agency, also involved in soil carbon sequestration research, will hold a joint workshop in September to develop joint publications on various aspects of soil carbon and greenhouse gas emissions accounting, measurement and monitoring and verification systems.
The two groups also will co-sponsor a symposium at the U.S.-Canadian Soil Science Societies Meetings in November in Seattle, Wash.