Soil is typically a great carbon storage system. But nitrogen emissions can mean the opposite in dry places like Southern California.
Healthy, undisturbed soil sinks carbon, storing what’s generated when plants and other living things decompose so it doesn’t get released as a planet-warming greenhouse gas.
The findings offer new motivation, then, to speed the transition away from fossil fuels and cut back on nitrogen-rich fertilizer if we want to slow global warming that’s already creating climate refugees due to worsening heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires. In places that get more regular rain and snow, other studies have shown that adding nitrogen to soil can increase carbon storage. Nitrogen fuels plant growth, which captures carbon and draws it down into the soil. It also helps slow decomposition of whatever is in the soil.
Carbon bound to calcium and other minerals in soils has previously been thought to be pretty stable, Homyak said. That’s because the minerals seem to help hide carbon from microbes, which otherwise feed on decaying plant and animal matter and release that carbon in the process. Dryland soil also has been thought to be good at buffering itself from too much acidification. So Homyak said learning that nitrogen could upend both of those bits of accepted wisdom was concerning.
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