Measuring & modeling agricultural carbon sequestration through a microbial lens

Funding source: Valent Biosciences/Valent U.S.A. (Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, https://www.halo.science/research/agriculture/carbon-sequestration)

PI: Debjani Sihi

Total Funding: $340,000 for 3 years.

Brief description of the project:
Coupling microbial proxies and SOM (soil organic matter) fractions with models that consider microbial contributions to SOM stabilization can enable us to quantify agricultural soil carbon (C) storage. By leveraging the Oxford College Organic Farm at Emory, we are measuring proxies that correlate with the persistence of soil organic carbon (SOC) like Soil organic matter (SOM) fractions (particulate and mineral-associated OM), microbial CUE (C use efficiency), microbial growth, turnover, and necromass. To evaluate the efficacy of climate-smart agricultural practices (e.g., cover crop, biochar amendment, and crop rotation), soil C storage will be quantified using a next-generation SOM model fused with data generated from this project.