MSc thesis opportunity: Assessing the agronomic constraints of soil carbon sequestration in Europe

Description

Soil Carbon Sequestration is meant to offset ample greenhouse gas emissions, enough to contribute to net-zero agriculture by 2050 in the EU. We just need to increase our soil organic carbon stocks. Sounds simple. But, is it?

While more and more biophysical assessments on how much carbon can be captured in soils are being published, contested and rebated in the academic literature, one important issue is often overlooked. To make any significant increase in soil organic carbon, farmers will need to change the way they cultivate theirs lands. How will agronomic and socioeconomic drivers and barriers affect the implementation of soil carbon sequestration practices? How will these constrain or enable what is technically possible to achieve?

As part of a European project on the agronomic potential of soil carbon sequestration, we aim to explore agronomic and socioeconomic barriers for farmers in a number of case studies using interviews with farmers and experts. Potential case study sites include Germany, Austria, Poland or Italy. For this purpose we are looking for an enthusiastic MSc student speaking either German, Italian or Polish to collect data in one of those sites as part of an MSc thesis.

Type of work

• Design, conduct and analyse surveys in the selected case study area.
• Explore agronomic constraints that may render a farming practice inapplicable
• Assess agronomic co-benefits that may enhance the adoption and scalability for the studied farming systems.

Prerequisites

-Fluent in German, Polish or Italian

-Background in either plant science, agronomy or related field

Location

One of the European case study sites (depending on language proficiency either Austria, Germany, Italy or Poland)

Period

Preferred starting between June and September 2023 (flexible)

Collaboration

This project is a collaboration with Wageningen Environmental Research. Possible other collaboration include local institutions, depending on the case study region.

Supervisors

-Marti Vidal Morantmarti.vidalmorant@wur.nl

-Renske Hijbeekrenske.hijbeek@wur.nl