Initial agronomic benefits of enhanced weathering using basalt: A study of spring oat in a temperate climate.

Addressing soil nutrient degradation and global warming requires novel solutions. Enhanced weathering using crushed basalt rock is a promising dual-action strategy that can enhance soil health and sequester carbon dioxide. This study examines the short-term effects of basalt amendment on spring oat (Avena sativa L.) during the 2022 growing season in NE England. The experimental design consisted of four blocks with control and basalt-amended plots, and two cultivation types within each treatment, laid out in a split plot design. Basalt (18.86 tonnes ha-1) was incorporated into the soil during seeding. Tissue, grain and soil samples were collected for yield, nutrient, and pH analysis. Basalt amendment led to significantly higher yields, averaging 20.5% and 9.3% increases in direct drill and ploughed plots, respectively. Soil pH was significantly higher 256 days after rock application across cultivation types (direct drill: on average 6.47 vs. 6.76 and ploughed: on average 6.69 vs. 6.89, for control and basalt-amended plots, respectively), likely due to rapidly dissolving minerals in the applied basalt, such as calcite. Indications of growing season differences in soil pH are observed through direct measurement of lower manganese and iron uptake in plants grown on basalt-amended soil. Higher grain and tissue potassium, and tissue calcium uptake were observed in basalt-treated crops. Notably, no accumulation of potentially toxic elements (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel) was detected in the grain, indicating that crops grown using this basaltic feedstock are safe for consumption. This study indicates that basalt amendments can improve agronomic performance in sandy clay-loam agricultural soil under temperate climate conditions. These findings offer valuable insights for producers in temperate regions who are considering using such amendments, demonstrating the potential for improved crop yields and environmental benefits while ensuring crop safety.

Initial Validation of a Soil-Based Mass-Balance Approach for Empirical Monitoring of Enhanced Rock Weathering Rates.

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a promising scalable and cost-effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy with significant environmental and agronomic co-benefits. A major barrier to large-scale implementation of ERW is a robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) framework. To successfully quantify the amount of carbon dioxide removed by ERW, MRV must be accurate, precise, and cost-effective. Here, we outline a mass-balance-based method in which analysis of the chemical composition of soil samples is used to track in situ silicate rock weathering. We show that signal-to-noise issues of in situ soil analysis can be mitigated by using isotope-dilution mass spectrometry to reduce analytical error. We implement a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating the method in controlled mesocosms. In our experiment, a basalt rock feedstock is added to soil columns containing the cereal crop Sorghum bicolor at a rate equivalent to 50 t ha-1. Using our approach, we calculate rock weathering corresponding to an average initial CDR value of 1.44 ± 0.27 tCO2eq ha-1 from our experiments after 235 days, within error of an independent estimate calculated using conventional elemental budgeting of reaction products. Our method provides a robust time-integrated estimate of initial CDR, to feed into models that track and validate large-scale carbon removal through ERW.

Increased yield and CO2 sequestration potential with the C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor cultivated in basaltic rock dust-amended agricultural soil.

Land-based enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a biogeochemical carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy aiming to accelerate natural geological processes of carbon sequestration through application of crushed silicate rocks, such as basalt, to croplands and forested landscapes. However, the efficacy of the approach when undertaken with basalt, and its potential co-benefits for agriculture, require experimental and field evaluation. Here we report that amending a UK clay-loam agricultural soil with a high loading (10 kg/m2 ) of relatively coarse-grained crushed basalt significantly increased the yield (21 ± 9.4%, SE) of the important C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor under controlled environmental conditions, without accumulation of potentially toxic trace elements in the seeds. Yield increases resulted from the basalt treatment after 120 days without P- and K-fertilizer addition. Shoot silicon concentrations also increased significantly (26 ± 5.4%, SE), with potential benefits for crop resistance to biotic and abiotic stress. Elemental budgets indicate substantial release of base cations important for inorganic carbon removal and their accumulation mainly in the soil exchangeable pools. Geochemical reactive transport modelling, constrained by elemental budgets, indicated CO2 sequestration rates of 2-4 t CO2 /ha, 1-5 years after a single application of basaltic rock dust, including via newly formed soil carbonate minerals whose long-term fate requires assessment through field trials. This represents an approximately fourfold increase in carbon capture compared to control plant-soil systems without basalt. Our results build support for ERW deployment as a CDR technique compatible with spreading basalt powder on acidic loamy soils common across millions of hectares of western European and North American agriculture.