ENV 582b () / 2024-2025

Natural Climate Solutions in Agricultural Landscapes: Topics in Enhanced Rock Weathering

Credits: 1.5 Spring 2025: M, 12:00-12:50 Webinar: 1:00-1:50 Discussion, Marsh Classroom

Seminar Series: Climate change has already dramatically altered the world and without appropriate mitigation eForts, these catastrophic disruptions will continue to grow, wreaking havoc on people and the planet. It is now clear that to combat climate change we will need to both reduce emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One such carbon dioxide removal technology that has gained traction in recent years is called enhanced rock weathering. Silicate rock weathering is a natural process that controls the earth’s climate on geologic timescales. Enhanced rock weathering involves pulverizing silicate rocks into dust and spreading dust on soils with the aim of accelerating the rate of weathering and subsequent carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. The most promising context for deployment of enhanced rock weathering is in already highly managed and disturbed agricultural soils where it has the potential to benefit soil and crops in a diversity of ways. Despite the promise of enhanced rock weathering, there are still a myriad of unknowns when it comes to this practice and there are challenges related balancing the speed of deployment and the speed of the science.