Climate Change
Climate change is the greatest challenge we face today. Climate change is projected to destroy ecosystems and displace hundreds of millions of people in the coming century, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths annually and billions of dollars in health and ecosystems damages. In order to address climate change, we need to understand the effects it will have on ecosystems as well as develop strategies to reduce emissions and capture carbon from the atmosphere. Climate change underpins most of Maya's research and, as such, she has published a number of works on greenhouse gas emissions as well as contributed to the California Climate Assessment. As a member of the Working Lands Innovation Center, she manages the largest test of soil amendments as a means for capturing carbon in California's working lands, working with stakeholders and leading engagement activities to develop solutions or our climate challenge.
Abstracts
Soil Amendments.
Soil amendments use as a method to promote carbon sequestration in working lands has been well established, yet uptake remains slow. Soil amendments have the capacity to offset half of food system emissions if applied to half of the world's working lands. We argue that the practice of soil amendment use needs to be accelerated, as does investment in the soil amendment industry by both private and public fractions. Organic and inorganic amendments not only promote carbon sequestration but produce myriad on- an off-farm benefits, the former of which may be optimized through a combined amendment approach. Considering that the benefits are robust and the urgency is severe, we encourage the widespread promotion of soil amendment use in working lands.
Negative Emissions.
Negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, wherein GHG sinks exceed sources, are fundamental to the Paris Climate Accord. Consumer choice, technology, and agricultural practices are poised to transform the world’s food system in ways that will alter Earth’s climate future; however, the negative emissions capacity of food system transformation is controversial. Here we examine the option space through which negative GHG emissions can be achieved across the life cycle of food production and consumption, both regionally and worldwide in 2050. We quantify a portfolio of scenarios spanning +20 to -30 gigatonnes of global GHG emissions per annum. The most promising interventions include hydrogen-powered fertilizer production, livestock feeds, soil amendments, agroforestry and sustainable seafood harvesting practices. Conversely, although adoption of plant-based diets is unable to create negative emissions under any scenario, plant-based diets offer other environmental and health benefits. Proper alignment of carbon-smart incentives with global agriculture infrastructure can accelerate negative GHG emissions in the future food system.
Rainfall Manipulation.
Climate change is projected to bring about changes in precipitation in the northeastern United States that include more intense rainfall events separated by longer dry periods. These precipitation patterns are expected to have direct impacts on greenhouse gas emissions but may also have indirect effects on organisms that influence nutrient cycling. We sought to test the effect of rain manipulation on carbon and nitrogen dynamics directly, as well as the indirect effect of precipitation variability on salamander and invertebrate abundance. Our results show that even short term changes in the nature and extent of precipitation can have significant impacts on interactions between biodiversity and biogeochemistry that control nutrient cycling in forest ecosystems. There is a strong need for longer, larger studies that address how changes in precipitation amount and variability produce both direct and indirect effects on carbon and nitrogen cycling. Such studies are complex and expensive, but simpler studies such as the one described here can be useful for identifying key interactions and responses and thus contribute to the design of more comprehensive efforts.