Evaluating Enhanced Rock Weathering as a Tool for Soil GHG Reduction and Carbon Sequestration in Cropland
Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) has emerged as a promising negative emissions technology for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. This dissertation presents a comprehensive field-scale investigation of ERW's impacts on agricultural soil CO2, CH4, N2O, and soil carbon concentrations across four sites in California and New York representing a gradient across climates, agricultural practices, crop types, and soil types. Through a series of multi-year field experiments, this research conducted detailed assessments of basalt rock dust amendments in diverse agricultural settings, including corn, hemp, red clover, and alfalfa. The study employed both manual and automated chamber techniques to measure soil greenhouse gas fluxes. Key findings reveal a complex and often contradictory picture of ERW's effectiveness. While some experiments suggested potential benefits, such as increased soil porewater alkalinity, the overall impact on greenhouse gas emissions was inconsistent. Notably, rock dust treatments did not consistently reduce CO₂, CH₄, or N₂O emissions across different sites and crop types. The research found that rock dust amendments, especially when combined with organic amendments like compost, showed some promise in altering gas fluxes, but these effects were neither uniform nor conclusive. While ERW remains a potentially valuable climate mitigation strategy, this study demonstrates the challenges in implementing and evaluating such technologies across diverse agricultural systems. These findings contribute critical field-scale evidence to the ongoing scientific discourse on enhanced rock weathering, emphasizing the importance of site-specific research and the complexity of carbon sequestration strategies in agricultural contexts.