User:Lysander down/Negative Emissions Potential by improved soil and agricultural management in Switzerland

Negative emissions Potential by improved soil and agricultural management in Switzerland

- The Swiss-based Risk Dialogue Foundation (RDF) was commissioned by the Swiss Federal office for the environment to produce a report on the possible potential and role of atmospheric carbon dioxide removal technologies in Swiss climate policy. The Risk Dialogue Foundation assembled participants from a broad range of institutions across Switzerland, which included CDR practitioners, NGOs, federal offices as well as industry. In their report, this group of experts focused on six different approaches for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) that are feasible in Switzerland, and estimate the approaches' CDR potential on the basis of the current scientific literature.

- Definition of Soil Carbon Sequestration (SCS): The adoption of land management measures that cause soil carbon content (C) to rise. Since virtually all of the carbon going into the soil by SCS is taken up from the atmosphere, it is therefore removed from it, and thus constitutes a negative emissions technology.

- One of the main advantages of SCS –which differentiates it from afforestation/reforestation and Bio-Energe and Carbon Capture and Sequatration (BECCS)– is that it does not compete for land with food production.

- Global soils hold about double the amount of carbon than the Earth's atmosphere.

- Soil carbon is released to the atmosphere by processes such as fires, drying of peatlands or inadequate management of mineral soils. - The potential for soil carbon sequestration in Switzerland has not been widely studied and the potential has been found to be immaterial.

- The economic benefits of SCS are not limited to negative emissions technologies applications, but also include the avoidance of further emissions and thus improved climate resilience. Furthermore, SCS offers substantial environmental co-benefits, which include improved water filtration, reduced erosion as well as increased biodiversity.

- SCS is considered to have high technological readiness, i.e., to be able to be deployed rapidly without larger additional investments in scientific research or technological improvements of the technology. Approach

- How much carbon is stored in the soil depends on the net flows of carbon going into and out of the soil. The gains in carbon typically stem from matter influxes such as roots, manure, harvest residues. The carbon losses stem from processes such as decomposition and respiration.

- Many different practices of SCS exist, that have region- or country specificity when deployed optimally (that are specific to geographic and climatic regions, and thus not necessarily optimal for all regions or countries.)

- In Switzerland, the tried practices include 1) the use of cover crops 2) leave harvest residues on agricultural fields 3) return of organic residues to the field via fertilization (farmyard manure, slurry, compost) 4) planting deep rooting crops 5) grass-clover leys in crop rotations 6) agroforestry 7) diversified crop rotations.

- In the last 30 years soils in Switzerland have been estimated to be roughly CO2 neutral by models. However, these model estimates are uncertain.

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