Soils ain’t soils: NSW DPI on the front foot with carbon sequestration potential in soils.

Soils ain’t soils: NSW DPI on the front foot with carbon sequestration potential in soils.
New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Australia, 13 Feb 2009

With the potential for carbon sequestration in Australian soils such a hot topic at the moment, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has dedicated two up-to-date and informative web pages to the issue.

The first web page (www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/areas/resources-research/soils-recycled-orga...) highlights a 28-page Scoping Paper: Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) Sequestration Potential for Agriculture in NSW, authored in 2008 by NSW DPI scientists Yin Chan, Annette Cowie, Georgina Kelly, Bhupinderpal Singh and Peter Slavich.

The second web page (www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/topics/biochar) provides a comprehensive background to biochar, a carbon-rich material produced from the slow pyrolysis of biomass, which has great capacity to sequester carbon in the soil. This page also outlines the research being conducted by NSW DPI into the potential for this material.