News | CREATE Climate-Smart Soils

Unleashing Resilience: How Conservation Agriculture Transformed Tharaka Nithi

Introduction Tharaka Nithi, a county nestled in the heart of Eastern Kenya, is no stranger to the challenges a changing climate poses. For generations, its farmers have battled unpredictable rainfall, soil degradation, and food insecurity. However, amidst these difficulties, a…

Developing a Root Imagery Tool to Analyze Cover Crop Roots

Summer Research Experience Olivia Wallace, undergraduate at the University of Guelph This summer I have been working in Dr. Claudia Wagner-Riddle’s agricultural meteorology lab at the University of Guelph. Much of my summer has centered on constructing and testing a…

On Soil Carbon Sequestration in Canada’s Managed Soils

Internship Experience with Soil Conservation Council of Canada and Compost Council of Canada By Rebecca Johnson, MSc Graduate from the University of Guelph Carbon sequestration has been a hot topic recently, with companies investing in reforestation with worldwide efforts to…

10 Lessons I Learned from the CREATE-CSS Core Course 2020

Reflective Essay Assignment By: Paige Kennedy, MSc Student at the University of Saskatchewan CREATE-Climate Smart soils is an interdisciplinary program that works to address climate change through soil science training. In the face of a changing climate, concerns about sustainability…

Student Perspective: LCA & Economics

Following yesterday’s post about the CREATE-CSS Annual Meeting: Climate-Smart Connections, today we are sharing a student’s reflection on the Life Cycle Analysis and Economics session. Emily Laage, an MSc student studying with Dr. Peter Tyedmers at Dalhousie University, presented during…

1st CREATE-CSS Annual Meeting

Climate-Smart Connections In February, we held our first CREATE-CSS Annual Meeting. We had big plans for this to be a great in-person networking event; however, due to COVID-19 circumstances we changed our plans to what turned out to be a…

On Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture

Internship Experience with Canadian Foodgrains Bank By Jess Nicksy, MSc student from the University of Manitoba The two greatest gifts of being an NSERC CREATE Climate Smart Scholar are the incredible people you get to meet, and the chances it…

On Canada’s Business Risk Management Programs

Internship Experience with Farmers for Climate Solutions By Tasmia Kabir, MSc graduate from FARE, University of Guelph Recently I graduated from Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph. I have been a scholar of CREATE Climate-Smart Soils…

Life Cycle Analysis of Food Systems

A Student Communication Piece By Sage Mosgrove, undergraduate at Dalhousie University My name is Sage and I’m an undergrad student from Dalhousie University, and a member of the CREATE Climate-Smart Soils program. This summer I assisted Drs. Peter Tyedmers and…

Dear Government From, Students

An exercise in policy briefs As part of the CREATE Climate-Smart Soils program students participate in an intensive week-long core course where they learn the ins and outs of climate-smart soils. For our Year 1 students, the core course took…

We are a national program with an international team of scholars

Local research program? Nope. We represent over half the world’s continents Within five months of its first year, CREATE-CSS has already brought together students and researchers from around the world. Between our first 12 students, we have representation from North…

What are Climate-Smart Soils?

You may be asking, what ARE climate-smart soils?

Climate-Smart Soils: A concept

The concept of climate-smart soils originated in the 2016 Nature paper by Paustian et al. The key is that soils have the capacity to sequester carbon and remove it from the atmosphere, thus helping the fight against climate change!

This depends on management, however. Soils also release greenhouse gases, especially agricultural soils which contribute a major share (37%) of agricultural emissions, mainly from carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O, which comes mostly from nitrogen fertilizer applied to the soil). Improved soil management can reduce these emissions by converting the CO₂ taken up by plants into soil organic matter.

A pathway to implementation

Paustian et al. suggest a path from research and monitoring > practices to sequester carbon in the soil and reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions > policies and systems to support implementation. Our program aims to expose our scholars to all these steps, so that they can work at implementing real solutions!