[00:00:09] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out temperate zones and tropic climbs and thriving seas winds blowing through breathing trees strong goes on and saves sunshine good planets are hard to find yeah, good plan.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hello, K Squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly K Squid radio show focused on environment, sustainability, and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California, and the world. I'm your host, Ronie Lipschitz. When you go out into the world and walk on the Earth, have you ever wondered what was beneath your feet? Animals and plants, of course, but mostly soil. Soil is a wonderful substance, an essential element in the riot of life that covers the planet's continents. But soil is not without a life of its own. A handful of fertile soil is home to more organisms than there are people on Earth, and these organisms are vital to plant and animal nutrition and growth.
My guest today is Dr. Chelsea Carey, director of soil research and conservation at Point Blue Conservation Science, located in Petaluma and Bolinus, California. And we're going to talk about soil.
Dr. Chelsea. Carey. Welcome to sustainability now.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Why don't we begin by having you tell our listeners about Point Blue Conservation Science, what it is, what it does, and where does it do its work, or where does the staff do the work?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So point blue. We are a nonprofit. We focus generally on climate smart conservation. We have a mission to conserve birds, other wildlife, and ecosystems through partnership science and outreach. We're headquartered in Petaluma, but we work all across California and beyond.
We have about 160 staff who are collectively working towards our mission. And we have programs that put our staff everywhere, from the Sierras to the sea and all the way down to Antarctica. So we help to build in adaptation and resilience into landscapes across those places and help to think about how we can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions where possible. And so we have our roots, actually, as a bird observatory. We started as Point raised bird observatory in the national seashore. So some listeners may be familiar with Point Raised Bird Observatory PRBO we were formerly known as.
And so we have just a long history of conducting ecological monitoring to inform conservation action that started with birds as indicators of ecosystem health and change and has grown considerably over the 60 years that we've been around.
We are a science based organization, so we conduct original research to inform action, but we also have boots on the ground helping landowners and agencies to manage and restore landscapes. And so I guess maybe to get at your question of sort of where we work and give the listeners maybe a better understanding of the work that we do, I have a couple of examples of things that I think we're really proud of as an organization that we've helped to accomplish over the years. Some of the programs.
One of them is that we've been on the Fairlon Islands for over 50 years monitoring birds and sea life around the Fairlons and have helped to set some conservation sort of targets and achievements around that. We have had a program where we've monitored a deli penguins in Antarctica for over 30 years and through our work down there, have helped to form the creation of the world's largest marine Protected Area Protection Area, and that's in the Roth Sea in Antarctica.
We also have staff who work on helping to guide conservation and management of shorebirds across the Americas. So we engage with dozens of partners and thousands and thousands of volunteers across, I think it's twelve countries along the Pacific Coast of the Americas to help coordinate international conservation efforts for shorebirds that in California really rely on the Central Valley for their stopping grounds and their migration.
We have a strong program on working lands, so we've leveraged over $100 million from the federal government and recently just 50 million from the state of California to support biodiversity and soil health stewardship on working land. So that includes forests, some meadows, rangelands and croplands statewide.
And we also as part of that, have an in house restoration team. So we've restored over 42 miles of mostly riparian habitat in California, mostly in the Bay Area, with approximately, I think it's like 60,000 students, student volunteers from local elementary schools and high schools. And then I think the last example I'll give of the kind of work that we do and where we do it is we have a strong informatics team in house. So we really try to empower data driven conservation, and that's at the national and international scales, in partnership with agencies like the Department of Defense and other federal agencies, we use data management and informatics support systems to help them unlock data, to store it, to manage it in a way that can drive conservation decision making for those agencies.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Well, I had no idea the organization was so expansive and far reaching, partly because I'd heard of the Bird observatory, but I hadn't heard of Point Blue until I looked you up. So that's quite interesting.
We're going to come back and talk about land management a little bit later, but what is your role at the organization and how did you get there?
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. So I serve as the director of soil research and conservation.
I was hired on as the first soil scientist on staff about seven years ago and have helped to grow our soils program across the organization ever since.
We have a small but mighty team that helps to sort of drive that work from a soils perspective and really collaborate with those other 160 staff across the organization to achieve shared goals for soil stewardship and research. And I think we see a big opportunity at Point Blue to partner with farmers and ranchers to help achieve shared goals. And so we do do a lot in that space. And that's where the soils work that we do comes into play. And I think at its highest level, the work that I do, the work that I help to lead at the organization, is trying to further the scientific understanding that underpins soil stewardship, we also want to cultivate awareness of soil health. So talk to you, engage with all sorts of audiences, and then promote the practical application of science based practices, so really get practices in on the ground.
And so my role as director of soil research and conservation, I helped to set the strategy for that. I helped to lead my team in developing and managing priority projects and partnerships. And as just one local example, I lead our on site partnership with tomcat ranch, which is a demonstration ranch in pescadero that aims to inspire and support engagement in regenerative agriculture. So we're their on site science partners, and I help to lead that work day to day. A lot of what I do would be akin to what an academic scientist does. I lead proposals, act as principal investigator, publish papers. But I do a ton of on the ground engagement, too, with agency staff, landowners serving in an advisory capacity, making sure that the work that we're doing is translated into action in whatever way that looks like.
How did I get here? Well, I think I've always been motivated to if I think about the story of my life in particularly related to my career, I think I've always been motivated to help make my mark in saving the world. So when I was younger, as many.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Of us, I used to have prospective students come in, and they said something like that, and I always reply, that's a big job.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So just taking a small piece of it in whatever way I can. And when I was younger in high school, I thought I would get a career in international relations, and so something total a life that would be totally different than what I lead right now. And as life so often goes, that trajectory stopped short before it even started.
And I was left my senior year of high school trying to figure out what else I was passionate about. And that led me into the world of soils.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Okay. And I saw you got your PhD. At UC merced, and it looked like you were in one of the first cohorts to finish their PhDs. In this program.
What is the environmental systems program at merced?
Exactly.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: Yeah. So I was I was the second graduating PhD. Class. So after I got my undergrad at DePaul university, I double majored in biology and environmental science. And it was during those years that I really fell in love with soils and grew to appreciate their importance. I started off in that program as wanting to save big cats in africa. Right. Like charismatic megafauna and I had the opportunity to participate in an undergrad driven research project that was focused on urban ecology and actually restoring areas of Chicago land that were dominated by ramnus cathartica, which is common buckthorn. It's the most prevalent woody species in all of created. It's a hedge plant so it creates really dense thickets and it's just taken over the woodlands. So I got to be part of a research project that was asking whether or not soil restoration in particular could help restore these ecosystems to their more native structure and functioning. And that's really when my love and appreciation for soils grew. And so I applied to UC Merced to work with Steve Hart. He was one of the founding faculty there. He had been at Northern Arizona University for maybe a decade prior and came to be an establishing faculty at UC Merced. And so I was in the second graduating PhD. Class. And for those who don't know, ucmer said it's the 10th and newest campus. So it was really young when I was there and at least at that time and I'm not sure if it's changed. They didn't have departments. They had programs. And the intention there was to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and minimize silos.
The Environmental Systems program it focused on integrating expertise across a wide range of disciplines including sustainable energy and engineering, water resources and climate ecology and biogeochemistry which is where my focus was and then natural resource management. So I took classes and was in a program, a very small program with folks who were working on solar panel technology and folks who were studying evolutions of jellyfish. And so it was really a neat opportunity. And at that time, the entirety of the graduate student population was, I think, 200. It was very small but was a really cool experience because you got to really shape how the university was in many ways. I served on the Graduate Student Association almost every year of my PhD and I ran uncontested every year.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: All right? You're listening to sustainability now. I'm Ronnie Lipschitz, your host. And my guest today is Dr. Chelsea Carey of Point Blue Conservation Science in Petaluma where she does work on soil range management and the like. And we're talking about soil, so let's get to the heart of the matter.
We take soil for granted, I think.
We're always standing on it. It's there. It's always been there. We think it'll always be there. But that's not really the case, is it? So what is soil, and how is it made? And maybe contrast that to dirt because I know they're not the same.
[00:13:50] Speaker C: My PhD. Advisor always said dirt is what you get on your pants and soil is what you study and what provides life.
But, yeah, that's correct.
This reflection that you have that soils are taken for granted we think it'll always be there. But that's not really the case. And I think we're predisposed to think of as soils as a renewable resource, something that's always going to supply us the benefits that we've experienced in perpetuity. But that isn't the case. Soil is, in fact, a nonrenewable resource, or that's how it's considered.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Over the scale that's important to human beings.
[00:14:32] Speaker C: Over the scale that's important to us as humans. Exactly. So what it means is that it can't be replenished at the same rate in which it's consumed or degraded.
And so that resource base of soils is effectively shrinking due to that degradation, whether it's erosion or nutrient depletion or contamination, as well as conversion, like urbanization putting pavement over, it actually losing the soil.
Because the soil is formed on much longer timescales than what it's lost, it can be lost very quickly. It takes a long time to form. We think about it as effectively a non renewable resource. And while we can work to reverse degradation and rebuild soils through human activity and that's really the foundation of the work that I do and many others do in this space. There is uncertainty about whether we can recoup all of the functioning once it's lost, like I said, to actually form new soil through a process that we call pedogenesis. For instance, if it's lost through erosion that can take hundreds to thousands of years or more. Soils are formed very slowly. Even though we hope and can expect restoration, in many cases can happen quicker.
So I just want to reflect on that piece of it.
It being taken advantage of and why we should care about its degradation. And then to your question about what it is and how it's made.
Most obviously, we think about the minerals and their organic solids in it, right? The sand, silts and clay.
And that's what we get on our clothes that's I think what often people will refer to as the dirt component. Right. It's this lifeless body, but it's so much more than that. It's this dynamic natural body that it's composed not just of those minerals and the organic materials, but of gases and liquids and living organisms. Because in the soil, you have the physical particles, the sand, silk, clay, and organic matter. And those build essentially what I think of as like the walls of the house.
But a house is so much more than that, right? It's us who live in it. It's the in between spaces that we thrive in, that we need and that make up a critical piece of the places that we call home. And that's the same with the soil. So the sand, salt, clay, organic matter that makes up the walls, but it's in between those places, what we call the pore spaces that actually make it a home. Turn it from a house to a home, and in there, it's water and it's carbon dioxide and it's oxygen. It's all these things that organisms need to survive, and that can be influenced both negatively and positively from how we manage soils and soils and how it's made is soils form from rocks, right? And so it's through this complex process that involves transforming materials from the earth's crust into something that can sustain life, grow, support life. And it's done through weathering or breaking down of materials, those rock materials. And how that happens depends on all sorts of things.
We call it corps. It's for short, and it's climate, organisms, relief or topography and parent material and time all come together to make a soil what it is. And soils are so diverse. One soil is different from another, and so that the soils of the central coast are going to look different than the soils of the central valley, for instance. And that can have repercussions for what's possible there, what's appropriate there, that sort of thing.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: That difference in the soils is a result of different geology, I presume. Right.
And erosion processes and the like.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Well, now, why is soil important in the grand scheme of things, and what are its functions?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Soils are the foundation of life, in my opinion.
Soils from its most basic sense, if we just think about the they provide so many ecosystem services to us in the most basic sense, we couldn't build homes if we didn't have soils, right? Soils are this structural foundation for life as we know it above ground both for us and for plants and then the organisms who rely on them. So it's a structural medium that's so critical for life. But soils do so much more than that.
Soils regulate the climate. Soils are exchanging gases with the atmosphere continuously. The greenhouse gases that we think about and ones that we may not think about so much, so, like carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide, water.
So they really help to regulate the climate. And soils also regulate and influence water dynamics. So they capture and store water. They can filter water and make it cleaner, or they can make it dirtier.
Soils have this critical piece of water regulation as well. I think from a biodiversity component, something that is maybe underappreciated, is that soils house just an immense amount of biodiversity below ground that we are just beginning to uncover and so just really playing a critical role in sustaining life from a biodiversity perspective. And then, of course, from a food production side of things, soils are critical, and the health of the soils are critical for sustaining a growing population and feeding both humans and other organisms across the globe. And so, from a food security perspective, soils matter for how much food we can produce, but also the quality of that food. Soil health is linked to plant nutrition and plant quality. And so it's not just the amount that we can grow, but the quality of it. And soils sit at the center of all of that.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: As you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about hydroponics and the quest to go to Mars to try and survive or live apart from soil. It's a hard thing to imagine.
Well, you mentioned earlier you mentioned healthy soil. So let's talk about healthy soil and the biological community, the soil biomes, what they entail, and what those soil communities do. And I'm thinking here of, in particular, the publication for Kids, which explains it really wonderfully.
[00:22:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: I know. It's a big question.
My point is, is right, that when you you I mean, we know we know about Earthworms, right? But there is so much more there that we can't see. And I think that's what's really sort of fascinating.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: The statistic I like to give, or the factoid I like to give, is that in a handful of soil, you have more organisms than there are people on the entire planet.
And if you just think about that for a second, that is mind boggling. There's a whole world in just a handful of soil, and in that there are more organisms or more kinds of organisms, the diversity of organisms rivals and exceeds the diversity of plants that you would find across the state of California. So it's not just that you have the sheer amount, but the sheer.
And it's we think about Earthworms yep. As a poster child for healthy soils. But like you said, it's so much more. You have organisms you can't see, like bacteria, maybe some that you've never even heard of. Archaea is another kind of microorganism. So you have bacteria, you have archaea, you have viruses, you have protists, which are other sort of single cellular organisms. You have your fungi, your mushrooms. You have nematodes, which are like roundworms and arthropods, your insects, earthworms, burrowing animals. And so all of these organisms are interacting with each other in their environment. They form a below ground food web, and they're performing vital functions. So all of those important ecosystem services I just mentioned, from a soils perspective, what soils provide, really, the organisms below ground are the engines that are driving them, and it's through their presence in our soils that we get those services.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Is it correct to say that all of those organisms, as they're sort of eating and living and expelling waste, are transforming the materials into soil? I mean, I'm just sort of trying to get a hold of what exactly they're doing.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
They're helping to form soils. They're helping to make soils. They take plant material, and they incorporate it back into the soil. So decomposition, when you walk out into a forest and you see plant leaves that are partially broken down, it's the organisms in the soil that are doing that. And so if we didn't have soil organisms, microorganisms, Earthworms, we would be buried in plant litter like it wouldn't recycle. And so when it does that, it incorporates plant material back into the soil, and that supports fertility. So it provides fertility for plants. That's part of the process that helps to capture carbon from the atmosphere, put it back into soil. They aerate that soil. So remember how I said that it's not the walls that are just important but it's those pore spaces in between the inside of your home that matters. Organisms like Earthworms can create those holes. They channel, they dig and they help with what we would call the structure of the soil so water can be captured, for instance and not flow off on top of the landscape. And so it's these physical processes, these chemical processes and even biological so as an example, the different types of fungi you have in the soil, those can help with pest resistance. So some organisms are pests and they can harm plants. But for every one pest there is, there's hundreds of good critters below ground and those good critters can actually compete and help to suppress pest attacks on plants. As just one example too of these biotic interactions as well that's going on below ground.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Well, let me ask you a question.
You said we would be up to our necks in leaf litter but if you go into a pine forest, for instance, what you see on the ground is a lot of pine needle duff which isn't being decomposed. So what's going on there?
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Yeah, great question. It is. It's just decomposing at a slower rate and part of that is because of what the plant material is made of. So certain plant material is easier for organisms to eat and material is harder for them to eat. So like pine needles tend to be harder to eat and only certain organisms like to eat.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Well, you know, I find one of the more interesting features of the soil biome to be the mycorrhizal fungi. And I had Susan Simart on the show.
Well, it's over a year ago now, talking about the Wood Wide Web. Is that what it is?
You write in the publication that they link plants together and so maybe you could talk about what are those fungi and how do they operate in terms of linking plants together and what happens to plants where there aren't these kinds of networks.
[00:27:50] Speaker C: Yeah, so mycorrhizal fungi are fungi who form intimate relationships with plant roots and it's a mutualism so the fungi are getting something beneficial from that relationship and the plants are getting something beneficial. So the fungi are getting carbon from the plants. They need carbon to survive and so they get carbon that's captured from the plants from photosynthesis. And in exchange they give plants typically it's water and nitrogen or phosphorus from the soil so nutrients that the plant and water that the plant needs to grow and survive. And so they're exchanging these services for one another. And the vast majority of plants form associations with mycorrhizal fungi.
And there's a couple of different kinds of mycorrhizal fungi. The most common one and the one that forms associations with the vast majority of plants, including grasses, they're called our buscular. Mycorrhizal fungi. And these fungi, they penetrate plant cells and so the way that they exchange that water and nutrients for the carbon is a little bit different than fungi that are called ectomycorrhizal fungi which form associations with lots of conifers. So pines you have actually like willows and oak trees like to form associations with ectomycorrhizal fungi and they do the same thing. But their physiology and sort of the way that they form the associations with plant roots is a little bit different but really important.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest that from a plant perspective mycorrhizal fungi help them grow in especially harsh conditions. So when resources are limited, when water is really scarce, when nutrients are really scarce, those fungi, they can extend effectively the area of soil that plants can reach. They're smaller, typically. They can get into and scavenge for water and nutrients and so they can help plants under those stressful conditions.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm Ronnie Lipschutz and my guest today is Dr. Chelsea Carey who's director of Soil Research and Conservation at Point Blue Conservation Science in Petaluma, but which I have learned has its own mycorrhizal roots all over the world.
So basically these are kind of like they've become extensions of the root system.
[00:30:42] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: I think this is a fairly recent discovery, this kind of mutualism. Is that the case?
It's not something that I heard about when I was a kid, let me put it that way, which was a while ago.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, let's mike, dr. Mike Allen from UC Riverside. He wrote one of the seminal books on this and that must have been oh, I don't mean a few, you know, a few decades ago, at least he's retired now, so I would say it's not super new. But I think what maybe you're picking up on is the broader recognition of the importance across fields and with a broader audience. And so I think land stewards and the public are increasingly hearing about this importance with this Wood Wide Web.
I think that is also as scientists begin to understand more and more the importance. Right. So we've known of these relationships for decades. We've known they're important, but we continue to learn, right, this idea that in these systems some of the trees can actually be connected by their fungal partners and exchange resources. That's definitely a newer concept and one we're actively, I think, learning a lot about.
But just yeah, I think folks are understanding more and more the importance in other spheres beyond sort of those who are leading the discourse in the know.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: There's a tendency to anthropomorphize those networks. Right? I mean, Samar does that to a certain degree and I think upsets other people.
On the other hand, we never think about ourselves in terms of something equal to mycorrhizal networks although we have all kinds of connections that are really not visible and people need people to survive. Well, look, let's turn to the work that you're doing on restoration now. I mean, I got the impression from looking at your work that your focus is on rangeland. But you mentioned that you're also doing work on, I think on agricultural land. But start by telling us about rangeland and why it's important, why soil restoration there is important since the COVID is never going to be very thick, I suppose.
[00:33:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say at point blue we definitely do work on both rangeland and cropland systems. From a soils perspective, a lot of the work has been on rangelands. And so that's an appropriate interpretation. And I would say to answer the question about why rangelands, well, rangelands for I guess I'll start with what are rangelands for folks who maybe aren't as familiar. And it has to do with not only the kind of vegetation and the ecosystem, but how it's used. So at its simplest rangelands are lands that are grazed by domestic and wild animals and those lands are typically grasslands or savannahs, shrublands deserts or other uncultivated, meaning they're not like cropland areas right. Are more natural systems. And I think the importance of rangelands emerges when you start to think about their spatial extent both globally and here in California. So rangelands account for somewhere around 28% of the land cover globally. And they're typically found in semi arid and arid regions.
And in California, depending on who you ask, what source you look at, they make up approximately 57 million acres. So that's like half the state or close to it and Mediterranean type grasslands. So the Mediterranean type areas account for about 30% of that estimate. So a really large proportion of California and of the globe is range. There are open spaces. And so when you start to just recognize that it's, I think, easy then to begin thinking about the ecosystem services and the importance of those landscapes. They provide many functions, so they help with food production and livestock production. Most of the water that flows in California that is at one point or another flowing over or through rangelands. So really important for water filtration and storage and flood management.
From a carbon sequestration and climate change perspective, when you think about that much land area, you don't have to have really large carbon sequestration rates to make a difference if you can get a little bit of a sort of carbon sequestration happening over really large areas. Right. And in California, rangelands not only support, I think it's somewhere like a $3 billion cattle industry, but they're globally recognized as hotspots for biodiversity and they provide habitat for many, many different wildlife and pollinators and recreational opportunities, lots of human benefits related to our recreation and our interactions with the environment. And so they are extensively managed. So I think what you are getting at towards the end of your question is that they aren't intensively managed the way that agricultural like Row. Crop landscapes are right. We're not in there tilling and fertilizing and pulling tractors over them. And so what is that possibility for stewardship interventions to, I guess, help sustain or promote those benefits that the landscapes already provide? And I'd say conservation is a really important piece of the picture. Keeping these areas open in range and under grazing lands is a key piece of the puzzle. And then stewardship helps to do that. It helps to keep ranchers ranching as just one example. And then more and more, I think folks are trying to maximize the benefits that are gained per acre from these ranchlands landscapes. We're relying on them to do more and more for us as we're facing climate change and biodiversity loss and equity issues and all of these crises of our time. We're now looking to the land base to help be part of the solution, which is great, but we're asking a lot of it. So then how can our stewardship reflect that? And I think that there's a lot to unpack there. And historically, because they have been extensively managed, people haven't thought as much about intervention opportunities. It's not as crowded of a space. I would say more and more it is, but when we started seven years ago, it wasn't a very crowded space, and we felt like there was a lot to contribute in terms of research and understanding there.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Well, let me ask you a question about this. So 500 years ago, there weren't cattle grazing on rangelands.
What was the state of those lands prior to the arrival of Europeans and cattle?
Was there different grasses?
[00:38:54] Speaker C: Okay, there sorry, my phone is linked to my computer.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Different grasses. I mean, like on the Great Plains, right? The prairie grass was basically extirpated and replaced. Right.
Are the rangelands now characterized heavily by invasive species as a result of grazing?
[00:39:19] Speaker C: Good question. Yeah. I mean, California's rangelands and our grasslands in particular are a highly changed landscape from what it looked like pre European colonization. And that's primarily from this massive invasion event by European annual grasses. So it was thought that prior to widespread European establishment, that California grasslands were dominated by either perennial grasses and or Forbes. And so this preponderance of annual grasses is definitely a new characteristic. And it came over. I think that there is speculation about how that happened.
There was a big drought and the introduction of domesticated livestock widespread that co occurred with this invasive annual spread. And so certainly could play a picture there. I mean, before that, right, there was bison grazing. There was other ungulates roaming the landscape. And so across the Americas, across the United States, so you certainly had grazing and arbivrari. And those populations have plummeted as domesticated livestock have risen.
And there used to be a lot more prescribed fire on the ground, cultural burnings, a lot more fire that helped to maintain these landscapes as well. And so that's something that I think a lot of landowners are trying to reintroduce at this point in California.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: I'm just curious, in your restoration efforts, do you try to move back towards that know, settlement ecology or is that just simply out of the question? I mean, it's sort of know, people are talking about the Buffalo Commons in the Midwest, right, and trying to replant the native that is anyone trying to do that here in California, replanting native grasses? Well, in a sense trying to restore the rangeland to its, I don't know, prelapse area and state, I suppose it would be.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Yeah, certainly.
[00:41:39] Speaker C: And I think what I would say, yeah, there's lots of restoration efforts and I think generally folks understand that it's important to look to the past what was this landscape like and learn from it and use that as a guiding post. But then we also have to look to the future. And so Point Blue takes a that's part of our climate smart conservation approach. So we have a whole climate smart restoration lens and a piece of that is modeling what our future climate scenario is going to be in restoration areas and can that help you determine what plants are best to try to restore there? So maybe you are going for replanting of perennial grasses, but the projected future climate at a site might tell you, well, this perennial grass might do better than this perennial grass, so it can help guide decisions. And so I think it's a yes. And that looking to the past is really important and looking to the future as well.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm Ronnie Lipschitz and my guest today is Dr. Chelsea Carey of Point Blue Conservation Science, which is a rather large operation that has projects, as it turns out, all over the world.
And there's a co authored commentary that you contributed to, and I want to quote from it soil carbon science. Oh, it's called soil carbon science for policy and practice. And it argues that, quote, there is scientific consensus on the need to build to rebuild soil organic carbon for sustainable land stewardship, unquote, but that there is also, quote, disagreement about the advisability and plausibility of rebuilding soil carbon as part of climate mitigation initiatives. So I'm wondering if you could talk about sort of the pros and cons argument in the sense of what the efforts are about carbon sequestration and why is there disagreement about it?
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I guess to start, I'll say that as a scientific community, there's very little disagreement, if any, about the fact that we've lost soil carbon. We know we've lost soil carbon, and we know that that's contributed to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 12,000 years of human land use.
And so when you have a loss conceivably, there's an opportunity to rebuild. And so we know rebuilding is possible through soil health stewardship. And we have principles, soil health principles like keep the soil covered with plants keep minimize disturbance. So try to minimize tillage or other physical disturbances of the soil.
Try to maximize diversity in your plant community. These are principles that we have that we can rely on, that we know if we use them will help rebuild carbon. So I would say that that's sort of the foundation of agreement is that we know we've lost carbon from the soil and we know we can rebuild it through certain practices that achieve those principles. I think where the debate enters is around what's possible, like the biophysical limitations of carbon sequestration. In other words, is it possible to rebuild enough carbon to be a meaningful part of the climate solution? And there's nuances in there like why some people think that maybe we can't that I'm not sure are worth getting into. We certainly can here. But there's debate around how much we can rebuild and if it's fast enough and at a scale big enough to help mitigate the climate. And so a piece of that scale piece and that scaling piece, how fast we can is really social and political constraints. So I think there's concern over can we mobilize at a large enough scale and fast enough to draw down carbon into the land base enough that it will be a viable piece of this climate solution.
You have folks on both sides of the camp there, but with very strong voices from a science perspective.
Other areas of concern, I think these cons include things like whether or not carbon sequestration from the land in one place would inherently result in carbon emissions elsewhere. And so that's something we call like leakages. So if you do regenerative practices in one place, if there are trade offs to how much food you can produce, maybe there's short term reductions in how much food you can produce because you're not putting pesticides and you're not tilling this kind of thing, well, then will you have to expand your agricultural lands further out. So now you just have more land under agricultural production. That's something called like a leakage. And then another thing that folks worry about is permanent. So when you capture carbon in the soil, will it stay locked away long enough to make a difference for the climate? So that's where some of the debate is. And I think a lot of it stems from the solutions at hand. So I see a lot of this tension really come in in the carbon market offset space. So these voluntary carbon markets because that would allow emitters to continue emitting and they can offset those emissions with soil carbon sequestration. Now, I think people have lots of concerns over that and I would agree with many of those. I think the overwhelming voice is that we need to stop admitting and draw.
You know, for what it's worth. I think at Point Blue's perspective, my perspective is that think natural and working land conservation and stewardship have an important piece to play in any climate change mitigation portfolio. And I think there's nuance there. Place based expectations and actions are super critical and we need ongoing science to inform best practices. But that certainly the land base has a role to play that will be meaningful.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: I mean, this accounting problem with carbon credits appeared with forests 20 OD years ago, right in the 90s. So it's not a new question. And I understand the accounting is a really difficult problem.
To the best of your knowledge, has anyone done successful carbon sequestration? I mean, it's a fairly new practice and I'm just wondering whether there are cases. And now I'm not talking about laboratory or controlled spaces, I'm talking now about rangeland and farmland. Do you know of any?
Oh, good.
[00:49:21] Speaker C: Yeah. So there's lots of examples. And one of the longest running agricultural it's not in the lab, but it's a production enterprise is Rothamstead, and it's Rothamstead Research. And it's over in Europe, and it's the longest running agricultural research institution in the world. It was founded in, I think, the mid 18 hundreds. And they have just like this just is just one example over that time, they have just a wealth of data showing that stewardship can matter and the different practices that you put on the ground can sequester carbon. And so there's many, many like that across the world. And so we absolutely know we can sequester carbon through our stewardship. And then it's just questions of how much can we scale it, will it stay there long enough in the soil once we've sequestered it? How do we do it so there's not unintended consequences elsewhere, those kinds of things.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: Well, we're coming to the end of our time together. And so is there anything else you might like to mention? And where can our listeners find out more about your work and Point Blue's work?
[00:50:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not sure that there's anything else from a content perspective I'd like to mention. I hope that folks just find wonder and awe in the soil and when they're out walking, look down below your feet and just think about sort of all of what the soil is providing and who's living below ground and just have a renewed sense of appreciation there. And if folks want to find resources, I mean, just the easiest is to go to Pointblue's
[email protected]. We have lots of our resources up online. There that microbe guide, the Soil Microbe Guide that you mentioned is on there. That's a guide that I had the pleasure of writing in collaboration with one of my former colleagues who illustrated it. She's a scientific illustrator. And so it documents all of the belowground world for California rangelands in particular, and highlights some notable groups of organisms, talks about their importance, thinks through how we can steward them and provide resources to monitor them too, as well, to look at them. And so I'd say folks can check out that and then if you're looking for a coffee table book, I'm just going to give one more plug. The Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative.
They have an incredible atlas. It's called the Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas. And it's this big coffee table book and it is incredible. And so I don't think it's super expensive. I have one. It's pretty reasonable. I would highly recommend if anybody's interested in having something at their fingertips.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Well, Dr Carey, thank you so much for being my guest on Sustainability Now.
[00:52:33] Speaker C: Thank you for the invitation.
It was my pleasure.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: You've been listening to Sustainability now. My guest today was Dr. Chelsea Carey of Point Blue conservation Science where she's director of soil research and conservation.
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[00:53:22] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out temperate stones and tropic climbs and thriving seas winds blowing through breathing trees strong ozone and safe sunshine good planets are hard to find yeah get good plan close.
