Storing carbon in the prairie grass: Plans would pay landowners to keep the ecosystem in a natural state to fight climate change
DAPHNE PRAIRIE, TEX. — B.F. Hicks is doing 70 mph down a two-lane road in Franklin County, Tex. He pulls up in his truck to a gated property that’s closer to Arkansas than Dallas. Waist-high bluestem grass sways in the wind across 922 acres that stretch out before him. The air is filled with “dick-dick-see-see-see,” the song that gives the dickcissel prairie bird its name.
And that makes them more reliable “carbon sinks” than forests, according to a 2018 University of California at Davis study. Because carbon is stored in the soil, it is not released back into the atmosphere when grasslands burn, as it is when trees go up in flames.Hicks, a lawyer who visits his property weekly, is hopeful that untouched grasslands in Texas and across the country can help mitigate climate change.TOP: The land, outside Mount Vernon, Tex., is a registered native prairie.
To create incentives for landowners to preserve natural land, Blackburn and the Baker Institute at Rice are leading a group of organizations as varied as the Nature Conservancy and Valero Energy to brainstorm ways to create a market for storing carbon in the soil of prairies, farms, ranches and grasslands in Texas and around the country.
“If you are looking for a definition for the word ‘resilience,’ it is these native prairie and marsh systems,” Blackburn said. “They evolved with storms. Storms are built into their DNA. Storms are not hard-wired into human DNA, except to run from them or the results they leave behind.” The group led by Blackburn and the Baker Institute is working on a blueprint for a nationwide program to pay for carbon storage in soil. Landowners who enter such a program would agree to a 10-year commitment. If the land is sold, the commitment restarts.The earliest method was to put a soil sample in an oven at 500 degrees. At that temperature, organic matter is burned off and carbon can be calculated using the weight of what is left.
A piece of land can recover, and store more carbon relatively quickly, with changes in cultivation, Collins said.
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