Clay locks carbon, promotes soil health
September 15th, 2011 - 3:14 pm ICT by IANSSydney, Sep 15 (IANS) A low-cost and out-of-the-box solution that involves adding clay rich compost helps lock up carbon and promotes soil fertility.
“Traditional ways to lower carbon emission… include spreading organic wastes… on agricultural land but research has shown that these degrade quickly,” said Nanthi Bolan, the University of South Australia. “This results in the release of carbon dioxide.”
“Our challenge was to come up with a method that will allow us to tie carbon added through manures and composts to the soil while keeping their fertiliser value,” a university statement quoted Bolan as saying.
“So we tried co-composting manures and compost with compounds such as iron oxide, aluminium oxide and allophane clay, and spreading this mixture on agricultural soils.
“These compounds are easily obtained from nature, especially allophane clay, which can be found in locations that contain volcanic ash,” added Bolan.
The researchers found that the compost enriched with clay not only locked up more carbon, it also contained more nutrients to fertilise the crops.
The next step is to find practical ways to produce large quantities of this material, and identify the ideal quantities for binding carbon and retaining.
These findings were presented at the CleanUp 2011 conference in Adelaide, Australia.
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Tags: adelaide australia, agricultural land, agricultural soils, aluminium oxide, box solution, carbon dioxide, carbon emission, cleanup, composts, compounds, crops, iron oxide, nutrients, organic wastes, quantities, rich compost, soil fertility, soil health, university of south australia, volcanic ash