Removing Legacy Carbon and Ongoing Emissions by Regenerating Soils Worldwide by NECHM

Here is full web address which was omitted above: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/view/11560/10833

Some comments from a retired Natural Resources Department Principal Scientist: Please be cautious in recommending the Savory method as a panacea for land degradation and climate. Watching Allan Savory give his TED talk leaves you with the feeling that finally we can do something to fix some of the ills of our world, but unfortunately these methods do not apply as widely as we might think. In some applications, the principal is sound – we know ourselves that when we regularly mow our lawn with the grass catcher off, we get thicker grass, and the soil builds up. Using animals to do this by confining them so they eat palatable and unpalatable grasses and forbs indiscriminately (but only down to the right level) will do the same job. However, we also know that if we have animals grazing on our grass, and there is no grass growth in dry times, then there is not enough to feed them. No matter how much we fertilize our lawn, we can’t make the grass grow if there is no rain or groundwater. Drought stops any grazing management system in its tracks. Intensive grazing systems (of which Savory’s is one) are the subject of considerable science discussion. Some are successful within a narrow set of circumstances, but the over-riding factor to all studies is rainfall (‘if it rains, grass grows’). To eliminate the dominating influence of rainfall in assessing grazing systems, a 14-year study of South Africa used satellite data to compare grazing practices, while removing the dominant influence of rainfall=grass growth - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140196303001071. This study found that the higher stocking rate of intensive grazing systems resulted in a consistent reduction in above-ground biomass when compared to non-selective grazing, and the more ‘intensive’ grazing resulted in higher reduction of biomass. In other words, intensive grazing practices result in less grass cover. The best aspect of Savory’s method is that burning is stopped. Burning is a very effective tool to stop forests re-growing. Half of Africa is high rainfall savannah, which will revert to forest if the burning were stopped – see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html. After a few years when African herders see their grazing lands overtaken with trees, they will turn back to fire. To see the extent of this burning just take a look at the NASA fire maps - http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD14A1_M_FIRE. ‘Conservation grazing’ does work in regions where consistent rainfall and pasture production can support the cost of fencing and labour - http://theconversation.edu.au/can-livestock-grazing-benefit-biodiversity-10789. Unfortunately, most of the world’s grazing pastures do not have closely spaced water points or stocking rates high enough to support the cost of labour and fencing to move herds as Savory proposes. Savory's methods are evolving, making them a moving target for others to study. Agricultural colleges, Primary Industries and Agriculture Departments see farmers as their main client, eager to support them, but clearly none of the many trials I have seen support Savory's claims. My personal view is that extremely careful small area pasture management grazing cattle (within available feed) may be able to offer benefits, but I have yet to come across any trials that have the resources to do this - an easy defence of the Savory method, but this may demonstrate the labour-intensive nature of the method. Also noteworthy is the failure of traditional intensive grazing in Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China and eastern Africa where large herds are constantly moved by traditional herders (as the Savory method does) – but sheer weight of livestock numbers has ravaged these landscapes in drought years, leading to more degradation. China has gone to great efforts to reverse desertification, (google Great Green Wall), and is discovering that in marginal areas the most effective method is re-planting native perennial grasses, and removing all livestock – see http://www.chinadialogue.net/books/4772-Books-simple-ecology-complex-issues/en. To put this in perspective, the number of ruminants now trampling planet earth is beyond belief. Ruminants evolved about 50 million years ago, and by the year 1500 there were about 200 million on our planet. Now there are 2 billion, and only 75 million are wildlife! Each year we breed 64 billion livestock (mostly chickens), that’s about 9 animals per person per year globally (28 animals per person per year in the USA). I have personally seen many dryland grazing pastures that have good grass cover - these are the farms that have stocking rates suitable to the local conditions for that season, but these are generally owned by families, not pastoral companies (the major beef and sheep producers), making them a small minority. Pastoral companies care about their bottom line, knowing that the bare ground will grow grass the next time it rains. There is enormous potential in above ground and below ground carbon sequestration, but this will only happen when we stop burning the daylights out of grasslands to remove dead grass and to stop ‘woody weeds’; and when we remove grazing pressure.

Same idea as '5 Billion Hectares of Hope' proposal in the 'Shifting Cultures for a Changing Climate' contest. This is probably much more feasible on this small scale - just New England. However, there are many issues with the Savory school of holistic land management such as its feasibility in urban areas. There is also no details on the carbon capture potential or supporting charts or figures.

Hello 2013agforestryjudges, There are extensive calculations of carbon capture potential with charts, tables, summaries and citations in the principal, 1st, reference included with the proposal. http://nechm.org/downloads/Geotherapy_chapter_r.7.7.1.pdf This is a 50 page document with far too much information to post here. Can you please review this and let us know if there is additional information you would like or clarification we can provide. Thank you, - Seth

Dear Laubacher - Thanks for your question. There are two general approaches to reducing atmospheric carbon burdens: (1) reduce carbon emissions, and (2) remove carbon that's already in the atmosphere. Virtually all of the climate mitigation efforts over the past 25 years have focused on emissions reductions. It is incontrovertibly clear, from the objective measurement of atmospheric carbon concentrations, that emissions reductions efforts have failed. Might they succeed eventually? One devoutly hopes so, but the indications are not promising at this point in time. But even if emissions were reduced to zero tomorrow, would that have an effect on climate change that would suffice to avert catastrophe? Keep in mind that positive feedbacks are already in play, e.g., Arctic summer ice, melting permafrost, seabed methane, raging wildfires, etc. etc. Those are the feedbacks we can see at the moment, all potentially adding untold quantities of carbon to the atmosphere far sooner than anyone anticipated even 5 years ago. Furthermore it is reasonable to assume and highly likely that there are feedbacks we haven't recognized yet. There are also generally unpredictable non-linear behaviors in the climate system, as well as time lags in the effects of heating due primarily to the inertial mass of the oceans. These are already *in the system*. They are not going away just because we belatedly decide to reduce emissions. I completely agree that emissions reductions are of vital importance, but our collective obsession with reductions has diverted us from what should be the real goal: reducing actual atmospheric carbon concentrations. Therefore, the work of NECHM is focused on precisely that: removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground in biomolecules that are stable for centuries and millennia, biomolecules that are created by soil biota in healthy ecosystems. We have lost more carbon to the atmosphere from degraded soils than from burning fossil fuels; we can also put it back. And we can do this without dangerous and untested high-tech geo-engineering schemes. Therefore our answer to your question is this: Few emissions will be reduced by our approach compared to business as usual levels (there will be some reductions because Holistic Management does not use synthetic soil supplements). However, I submit that you are asking the wrong question. The pertinent question would be: "How much will *atmospheric carbon concentrations* be reduced vs. business as usual levels." If you insist on your criterion as stated, you may eliminate our proposal without further ado, and you need not take the time to read our paper (scheduled to be published by CRC Press late this year in an anthology of low-tech approaches to geotherapy). If, however, you are willing to consider expanding your perspective to one that includes an effort that shows great promise in directly addressing climate, one that's outside of the dominant box that's been obscuring other possibilities (thinking beyond current boundaries is what I thought Climate Co-Lab's purpose was), then we are happy to assist in any way we can.

Dear 2013agforestryjudges: Thank you for your question, quoted here for ease of reference: "Same idea as '5 Billion Hectares of Hope' proposal in the 'Shifting Cultures for a Changing Climate' contest. This is probably much more feasible on this small scale - just New England. However, there are many issues with the Savory school of holistic land management such as its feasibility in urban areas. There is also no details on the carbon capture potential or supporting charts or figures." I would like to elaborate somewhat on Seth's reply. You are correct that the feasibility of Holistic Management (HM) is untested in urban areas, keeping in mind that HM is a *planning process* for ecological practice, not only a grazing process. Eco-restoration and carbon capture and storage in urban and suburban (as well as rural) environments are the new areas that we at NECHM hope to implement. We are currently in the process of investigating approaches in non-rural areas, which would include turning lawns back into native-plant carbon sinks, and that would also have a significant impact on water use (there are likely more acres of lawns - 40.5 million - than the eight largest irrigated crops combined in the U.S. - http://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-continental-u-s/). Another project recently begun in Somerville, Massachusetts, informally at the present time, is depaving areas of asphalt and concrete which are unnecessarily covering soils. The implications of restoring bare and covered soils for cities and towns for purposes of photosynthesis, temperature regulation and flood control are significant. Use of goats or sheep for such projects have the potential for accelerating positive effects. This is only part of our work. We also anticipate working with farmers across New England in ways of increasing soil carbon sequestration. Since we live in a region with ample year-round rainfall, there is significant potential for carbon capture, as green plants grow abundantly. HM offers many techniques for improving land productivity, and several New England farmers have been practicing HM with great success. Our task is to help spread the word on "carbon farming," which has many ecological and economic benefits beyond the storage of carbon. As for the amount of carbon sequestered, there are reports of 2 or more tons C/acre/year on holistically managed lands, even more in some areas with year-round rainfall, less in drier areas. At that rate, however, on the average of 1 ton C/acre/year on over 12 billion acres of degraded grasslands worldwide we could capture 12 gigatons/year, or 6 ppm, and sequester 120 ppm of legacy carbon in 20 years if we eliminate emissions, or less than 40 years with ongoing emissions. Whether or not we do it is another question, but this approach is likely to appeal to a wider range of people than emissions reductions, as it requires no sacrifice from the public - on the contrary it is of visible benefit, for few would prefer vast bare desertified tracts to lush greenery that is routinely restored under HM. At this point there is some direct data collection and a good deal of inference from existing rangeland and soils studies (available in our paper, which Seth cited above). There is no doubt that more data collection is in order, but there is more than enough to get started and there are so many benefits to eco-restoration that there is literally no reason not to proceed apace. HM is currently practiced successfully on 40 million acres worldwide. NECHM's purpose is to contribute to the aggregate knowledge and implement such practices in the New England area, urban, suburban and rural.

Your comments about the way the question is posed in the CoLab's proposal template are quite on target. In the next round we will strive to put schemes that seek to capture existing carbon on equal footing with those that seek to reduce future emissions. It seems it is early days for HM, both in terms of measuring impacts and convincing the established actors that the approach is viable. Given the need for the latter, the ability to have a well-honed pitch about potential impacts would seem all the more important, even if some of the figures necessarily have to be based on assumptions. I do know that at least one member of the Climate CoLab's Expert Council https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/resources/-/wiki/Main/Expert+Council has expressed great interest in and enthusiasm for this approach, which I hope you will find encouraging.

Hi Rob - Thanks for your encouraging note. You're quite right about a well-honed pitch, it's something we need to work on. But we're not in the early days of HM. Allan Savory has been working on it for around 50 years and has results going back to the early 1970s. Hundreds, possibly thousands of farmers and ranchers have been convinced and practicing for decades, and impacts on the health of the land and the practitioners as well as on economic success are well established (simply not having to use synthetic inputs can turn an operation from bankruptcy to profit). Many more practitioners are coming on board in recent years because HM works, often dramatically well. Allan gave a well-received TED Talk in February which presents an overview of his work (http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html). That restoration of grasslands also stores large quantities of carbon is a side effect of HM, in the sense that it wasn't an issue until relatively recently. But it all makes sense. Rebalancing the water cycle, major increases in photosynthesis, and life forms which are constantly burying carbon away from the surface (ruminants, wild or domestic; prairie dogs; dung beetles; earthworms; plant and fungal roots; etc.) all mean carbon sequestration. Exactly how much we can't be sure yet, but we've lost 400-500 gigatons of soil carbon since the beginning of agriculture, and now there's good reason to believe that we can put at least half of that back. Cheers! Adam