On April 6th, I had the opportunity of attending the Rose Scholars Cafe Series with Dr. Dawit Solomon. I really enjoyed the discussion because we touched upon a unique topic which could potentially have a tremendous impact on the world. When you first hear about climate change, soil is not among the first things that come to mind. Similarly if you think about soil, you do not first think about how useful it is in a variety of situations. Dr. Solomon started the discussion by asking us what we thought soil was made of. We then delved into how soil is connected with greenhouse gas emissions. I was surprised to find out that 25% of emissions comes from soil as a result of land use and land cover changes. Emissions from cars and factories are one of the first things that comes up when we thing about greenhouse gasses, but few would know about how our use of land contributes to nearly a fourth of the emissions. In addition, Dr. Solomon discussed a way in which we can use soil to help reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.

One of the important environment issues is that the we are releasing too much carbon in the air.  Trees help to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air but we release far too much greenhouse gasses. Dr. Solomon suggests that we use soil to take away the CO2 from the air. We would essentially be locking away the carbon dioxide in the soil. While the CO2 in the air causes global warming, CO2 in the soil can be used to grow crops. We could make rich soil by including CO2 and a other waste products such as bones. I was quite excited by the this prospect of using soil to not only clean our air but also using the CO2 to grow our food.  In addition to this, the overall cost of making such soil is far less than the price an individual would pay to have the soil from big companies. Thus it enables farmers in other countries who may not have the financial backing to buy nutrient rich soil from the US to still have nutrient rich soil for their crops. Overall, I believe Dr. Solomon gave a compelling argument for why soil is important and how we can use it to combat problems with climate change.