West Virginia University researchers are exploring the potential for carbon-hungry grasses planted on reclaimed mine land to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
A $35,000 grant from the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation supports the two-year study by the National Mine Land Reclamation Center at WVU’s West Virginia Water Research Institute.
Jason Fillhart, WVWRI watershed project manager, said the research team will study grasses planted 12 years ago by WVU researchers investigating biofuels at a former surface mine site in Upshur County. The goal is to determine how much carbon has been captured and stored as soil organic matter since the grasses were planted and whether different types of vegetation are more effective at capturing and storing carbon in soil.
“With a lot of these marginally reclaimed lands, if we can more efficiently plant these to sequester more carbon, that’s one step closer to becoming carbon neutral to offset our carbon footprint,” Fillhart said. “Carbon credit trading is going to be a very big commodity in the future, so this is really just a small piece of what we expect will eventually be a much larger research project.”
The current study targets 20 one-acre plots of switchgrass and miscanthus, described as C4 plants because the first carbon compound produced during photosynthesis contains four carbon atoms. Most of the world’s plants are C3 plants, which instead produce a three-carbon compound.
Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the WVWRI, said C4 plants are much more efficient at photosynthesis, generating three to four times more plant material per acre than C3 plants.
“Corn and sugar cane are good examples of C4 plants,” Ziemkiewicz said. “That’s why they grow so rapidly. Switchgrass was one of the native grasses that made up the pre-colonization North American prairie ecosystem. Unlike corn, though, it has very deep roots which transfer carbon into the soil. Unless it’s cultivated, the organic carbon stays put. Our Corn Belt has been mining this organic matter since the steel plow was invented.”
With student support, WVU researchers plan to collect and analyze samples from the C4 plant roots, shoots and surrounding soil over two growing seasons