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>whether it is better to let tree grows on a parcel, or cut grass regularly and let it compost, adding biomass to it. Of those two options, trees. Compost doe

>whether it is better to let tree grows on a parcel, or cut grass regularly and let it compost, adding biomass to it. Of those two options, trees. Compost does not sequester carbon in and of itself. That's a wishful thinking myth that is based on a lack of understanding of soil. Compost is organic matter, in various stages of life, death and decay. We want soil to have more organic matter. So people assumed adding compost to dirt would accomplish this. It does not. The organic matter is decomposed into CO2 and returns to the atmosphere. We need to increase STABLE organic matter in the soil, and compost does not do that simply by adding it to dirt. The only thing that creates stable organic matter is microbes living in the rhizosphere in symbiosis with plants. In order to increase soil SOM, we need more root mass. The way compost can help is to plant a forest or meadow and keep soaking it in compost tea so that the roots get deeper and deeper, expanding the rhizosphere and the depth of the soil. Normal roots will only grow as deep as there are symbiotic microbes, and yet those microbes will only live where there are roots, so there's a catch-22. We can use the microbes in compost, dissolved into water as compost tea, to get microbes deeper than the roots, so the roots go deeper, and then keep doing that. There's people with grass that has 20 foot deep roots from doing this.

Iv 7y ago
Thanks! I was looking for that kind of answers! So does that mean that at any given place, there won't be soil for deeper than the roots go? What happens to the soul if all the roots die or are removed (assuming it is not washed away by water)? Does it decay into CO2?
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  >So does that mean that at any given place, there won't be soil for deeper than the roots go? In general yes. The exception being where there were roots and someone recently killed all the plants, it takes a while for the soil to die. Also some plants have roots that are just for water, usually taproots, and those can go much deeper than the soil since they don't care about microbes or nutrients, just water. >What happens to the soul if all the roots die or are removed (assuming it is not washed away by water)? Does it decay into CO2? Yep. This is how plowing and tilling has destroyed so much top soil. Much of the Americas had several feet of rich, dark topsoil in the 1700s, which we proceeded to plow every year, leaving it bare for months so that the microbes had nothing feeding them, so the exudate feeders start dying, the decomposers decompose their "corpses" and the soil loses a bunch of carbon to the atmosphere as CO2. Over years of conventional farming, you eventually end up losing all the soil and you're left with just dirt, which you now need to add soluble fertilizer to in order to grow a crop.
- netjiro 7y ago
  Different plants have different behaviours. Some sequester carbon well in the ground, others have near zero long term sequestration value. Some of the best are algae and seaweed that are allowed to sink to the bottom when they die. Plants that grow in bogs behave similarly. Chestnut is one of the best long term carbon sequestering trees.

Iv 7y ago

Thanks! I was looking for that kind of answers! So does that mean that at any given place, there won't be soil for deeper than the roots go? What happens to the soul if all the roots die or are removed (assuming it is not washed away by water)? Does it decay into CO2?

ShlomoS 7y ago
>So does that mean that at any given place, there won't be soil for deeper than the roots go? In general yes. The exception being where there were roots and someone recently killed all the plants, it takes a while for the soil to die. Also some plants have roots that are just for water, usually taproots, and those can go much deeper than the soil since they don't care about microbes or nutrients, just water. >What happens to the soul if all the roots die or are removed (assuming it is not washed away by water)? Does it decay into CO2? Yep. This is how plowing and tilling has destroyed so much top soil. Much of the Americas had several feet of rich, dark topsoil in the 1700s, which we proceeded to plow every year, leaving it bare for months so that the microbes had nothing feeding them, so the exudate feeders start dying, the decomposers decompose their "corpses" and the soil loses a bunch of carbon to the atmosphere as CO2. Over years of conventional farming, you eventually end up losing all the soil and you're left with just dirt, which you now need to add soluble fertilizer to in order to grow a crop.
netjiro 7y ago
Different plants have different behaviours. Some sequester carbon well in the ground, others have near zero long term sequestration value. Some of the best are algae and seaweed that are allowed to sink to the bottom when they die. Plants that grow in bogs behave similarly. Chestnut is one of the best long term carbon sequestering trees.