Soil and its promise as a climate solution
Restoring Earth’s carbon balance requires a menu of solutions at many scales, but soil is at the center of them all. We know soils feed plants, and plants feed us, but the world’s soils do more than help put food on the table. Soils recycle nutrients, regulate our water supply and, importantly for this moment in history: they store more carbon than plants, animals and the atmosphere combined. So, focusing humanity’s restoration efforts below ground could turn out to be an essential piece of the climate change solution puzzle. Most signs point to ongoing climate change leading to losses of ecosystem carbon stocks. It’s really important that “we restore that natural pathway of carbon into the soil.” But, do we really know what soils are, how they form, how they get degraded and then repaired, and what they can do to support ecosystems and humanity? A dive below ground can help explain how a soil-focused solution to our climate change problems might work. The basics: Getting to know the d...