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Natural Climate Solutions in Agricultural Landscapes

ENV 582 — Topics in enhanced rock weathering

Public Webinar: Mondays 12:00pm - 12:55pm ET

 
Climate change has already dramatically altered the world and without appropriate mitigation efforts, 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. 

The webinar will meet weekly on Mondays from 12:00-1:00 pm ET from January 27th to April 14th, 2025 (however, our first seminar will be held Friday January 24th). The webinar is free and open to the public.
 
Register for Seminar Zoom Sessions

 

January 24th

Week 2 (Zoom) 
Modeling potential of enhanced weathering at large scales.
  • David Beerling (University of Sheffield) 
  • Suggested reading: Beerling DJ, Kantzas EP, Lomas MR, Wade P, Eufrasio RM, Renforth P, Sarkar B, Andrews MG, James RH, Pearce CR, Mercure JF. Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands. Nature. 2020 Jul 9;583(7815):242-8. 
     

January 27th 

Week 3 (Zoom) 
Pros and cons of enhanced weathering.
  • Noah Planavsky (Yale University)
  • Suggested reading: Beerling, D.J., Epihov, D.Z., Kantola, I.B., Masters, M.D., Reershemius, T., Planavsky, N.J., Reinhard, C.T., Jordan, J.S., Thorne, S.J., Weber, J. and Val Martin, M., 2024. Enhanced weathering in the US Corn Belt delivers carbon removal with agronomic benefits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(9), p.e2319436121.
     

February 3rd

Week 4 (Zoom)
Carbon dioxide removal via alkalinity enhancement.
  • Iris Holzer (UC Santa Barbara) 
  • Suggested reading: Holzer, I.O., Nocco, M.A. and Houlton, B.Z., 2023. Direct evidence for atmospheric carbon dioxide removal via enhanced weathering in cropland soil. Environmental Research Communications, 5(10), p.101004.
 

February 10th 

Week 5 (Zoom)
Soil organic carbon and enhanced weathering.
  • Noah Sokol (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
  • Suggested reading: Sokol, N.W., Sohng, J., Moreland, K., Slessarev, E., Goertzen, H., Schmidt, R., Samaddar, S., Holzer, I., Almaraz, M., Geoghegan, E. and Houlton, B., 2024. Reduced accrual of mineral-associated organic matter after two years of enhanced rock weathering in cropland soils, though no net losses of soil organic carbon. Biogeochemistry, 167(8), pp.989-1005.
 

February 17th

Week 6 (Zoom)
President’s Day – no webinar currently scheduled
 
 

February 24th

Week 7 (Zoom)
Economics of carbon dioxide removal and enhanced rock weathering.
  • Ella Holme (Isometric)
  • Suggested reading: Clarkson, M.O., Larkin, C.S., Swoboda, P., Reershemius, T., Suhrhoff, T.J., Maesano, C.N. and Campbell, J.S., 2024. A review of measurement for quantification of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering in soil. Frontiers in Climate, 6, p.1345224.
 

March 3rd

Week 8 (Zoom)  
The influence of soil pH, such as acidic tropical soils, on enhanced weathering. 

  • Christina Larkin (University of Southampton, InPlanet) 
  • Suggested reading: Larkin, C.S., Andrews, M.G., Pearce, C.R., Yeong, K.L., Beerling, D.J., Bellamy, J., Benedick, S., Freckleton, R.P., Goring-Harford, H., Sadekar, S. and James, R.H., 2022. Quantification of CO2 removal in a large-scale enhanced weathering field trial on an oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysia. Frontiers in Climate, 4, p.959229.

 

March 8th – March 23rd

Yale Spring Break
 

March 24th 

Week 9 (Zoom) 
Crop yield and enhanced weathering.
  • Fatima Haque (Flux) 
  • Suggested reading: Haque, F., Santos, R.M., Dutta, A., Thimmanagari, M. and Chiang, Y.W., 2019. Co-benefits of wollastonite weathering in agriculture: CO2 sequestration and promoted plant growth. ACS omega, 4(1), pp.1425-1433.
 

March 31st

Week 10 (Zoom) 
Life cycle analyses of enhanced weathering.
  • Yuan Yao (Yale University) 
  • Suggested reading: TBD
 

April 7th 

Week 11 (Zoom)
Enhanced weathering in rangeland and dairy systems.
  • Whendee Silver (UC Berkeley) 
  • Suggested reading: Anthony, T. L., A. R. Jones, W.L. Silver, 2025. Supplementing enhanced weathering with organic amendments accelerates the net climate benefit of soil amendments in rangeland soils. AGU Advances.
 

April 14th

Week 12 (Zoom) 
Enhanced weathering and carbon markets.
  • Anu Khan (Carbon Removal Standards Initiative)
  • Suggested Reading: TBD
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