Soil Biodiversity as Nature-based Solutions to Promote Boreal Forest and Peatland Carbon Storage
Partners: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources
Soils contain ¼ of the Earth’s biodiversity and sequester more carbon than all vegetation and the atmosphere combined. As such, soil systems are seen as a Nature-based Carbon Solution for mitigating climate change, protecting biodiversity, and achieving human well-being through ecosystem services such as the provisioning of food, fuel, and fibre resources. Ongoing climate warming and land-use changes diminish the ability of soils to store carbon and accelerate the release of greenhouse gasses by altering carbon inputs to soil systems and affecting soil biodiversity. It is of central importance to understand the biological mechanisms that sequester and stabilize soil organic carbon and the processes that accelerate the biological release of carbon from soils to mitigating carbon-climate change feedbacks. Our research builds on collaborations between Western and the Ontario government across two ongoing, unique, field-based experiments in Ontario’s boreal zone. This research hopes to enhance the soil carbon sequestration potential of boreal forests and peatlands through the mechanistic understanding of soil biodiversity under climate change and 20 years of silvicultural land management. The team will integrate data from on-going field experiments into state-of-the-science carbon-based models, and support the work of one PhD student, two MSc students, and one undergraduate research student.
Researcher Biography
Zoë Lindo is professor in the department of biology at Western University. As an expert in soil biodiversity, their work focuses on the causes and consequences of soil biodiversity loss, including the vital roles soil biodiversity play in soil carbon sequestration. This work extends to their role as Vice-Chair of the United Nations -FAO International Network on Soil Biodiversity (NETSOB), scientific member of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, and Editor-in-Chief of Pedobiologia-Journal of Soil Ecology.
