SBIR Phase I: Accelerated carbon sequestration

该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在开发新型土壤有机质（SOM）改良技术，重点是改善作物的养分供应，维持农业，并提供长期，深层土壤碳封存，以帮助应对气候变化。美国和全球迫切需要开发土壤中持久性有机物改良剂的新方法。这项工作的结果将是引入新的土壤肥力和碳储存服务，以前所未有的速度永久封存农业土壤中的碳。该方法与其他经济共同效益具有协同作用，例如增加作物产量，减少肥料负荷，降低与农业有关的大气二氧化碳浓度，以及扩大生物炼制和森林管理能力。这些高质量的农业土壤改良服务最终可能对全球环境产生积极影响。本项目旨在开发一种新的土壤有机质改良技术。研究和开发将能够获得关键的基准和验证数据。 关键的原型，初步验证，并在一个代表性的农业土壤基准将进行，以便该技术可以随后扩展到其他农场。 这项建议旨在：1）证明可行地整合到商业农场的操作中，2）证明该方法可扩展到田地和英亩规模的应用，以及3）使用原位CO2气体分析仪进行初始稳定性测试以验证碳是化学稳定的，4）跟踪碳含量变化，5）与对照进行比较的实验室实验以验证其不容易受到来自根部侵入的氧气暴露，以及4）验证土壤肥力的改善，包括土壤性质的变化，如土壤持水能力、阳离子交换能力和盐基饱和度。该项目将使用现场和实验室培养的每两周一次的CO2损失率来估计碳的平均停留时间（MRT），并将处理区与对照区进行比较。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop novel soil organic matter (SOM) amendment techniques focused on improving nutrient supply to crops, sustaining agriculture, and providing long-term, deep soil carbon sequestration to help combat climate change. New methods of developing persistent organic matter amendments in soil are urgently needed in the US and globally. The result of this work will be to introduce new soil fertility and carbon storage services that permanently sequester carbon in agricultural soils at an unprecedented rate. The approach is synergistic with other economic co-benefits, such as increasing crop yields, reducing fertilizer loads, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations as related to farming, and expanding biorefineries and forest management capabilities. These high-quality agricultural soil amendment services may eventually have a positive impact on the global environment. This project seeks to develop a novel, soil organic matter amendment technique. The research and development will enable acquisition of critical benchmarking and verification data. Critical prototyping, initial verification, and benchmarking in a representative agricultural soil will be conducted so that the technique can then later be extended to other farms. This proposal seeks to: 1) demonstrate viable integration into operations on commercial farms, 2) demonstrate that the method is scalable to fields and acre-scale applications, and 3) perform initial stability tests to verify the carbon is chemically stabilized using in situ CO2 gas analyzers, 4) track carbon content changes, 5) perform laboratory experiments compared against controls to verify it is not vulnerable to oxygen exposure from root intrusion, and 4) validate soil fertility improvements including changes in soil properties like soil water-holding capacity, cation exchange capacity, and base saturation. The project will use field- and lab-incubated biweekly CO2 loss rates to estimate the mean residence time (MRT) of carbon and compare treatment plots against controls. The results will be validated with random field locations and control plots of land.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.