Impacts of Diverse Cover Crop Mixtures on Soil Health and Soil GHGs

With losses of soil carbon constraining our ability to ensure regional food security, there is increased focus on using regenerative agricultural management to improve soil health and the sustainability of our agri-food system. Numerous knowledge gaps exist around how we can reliably increase soil carbon, and how regenerative principles may be applied to field conditions relevant to farmers in East Central Ontario, where a short growing season, variable topography, and shallow soils challenge farmers’ ability to adopt regenerative practices such as cover cropping. In this collaboration, Common Earth and Trent University researchers will establish a duplicated, controlled field trial to study soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics and greenhouse gas release as impacted by cover crop management, to better understand how we may best put and keep carbon in soil using regenerative practices.

Faculty Supervisor:

Karen Thompson

Student:

Partner:

Common Earth Soil Health Inc.

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

Trent University

Program: