SBIR Phase I: Accelerated carbon sequestration

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在开发新的土壤有机质(SOM)改良技术，专注于改善作物的养分供应，支持农业，并提供长期的深层土壤固碳，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质改良剂的新方法。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。该方法与其他经济效益是协同的，例如增加作物产量，减少化肥负荷，降低与农业相关的大气二氧化碳(CO2)浓度，以及扩大生物精炼和森林管理能力。这些优质的农业土壤改良服务可能最终会对全球环境产生积极影响。该项目旨在开发一种新型的土壤有机质改良技术。研究和开发将使关键基准和核查数据的获取成为可能。将在具有代表性的农业土壤中进行关键的原型制作、初步验证和基准测试，以便该技术稍后可以推广到其他农场。这一建议旨在：1)展示与商业农场运营的可行整合；2)证明该方法可扩展到田地和英亩规模的应用；3)执行初始稳定性测试，以使用现场二氧化碳气体分析仪验证碳在化学上是稳定的；4)跟踪碳含量的变化；5)进行实验室实验，与对照进行比较，以验证其不易受到根系入侵引起的氧气暴露的影响；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、阳离子交换能力和碱基饱和度的变化。该项目将使用田间和实验室培养的双周二氧化碳损失率来估计碳的平均停留时间(MRT)，并将处理小区与对照进行比较。结果将通过随机的田野位置和土地控制地块进行验证。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.