EEM (Emily) te Pas, MSc

An important societal challenge is to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C, which requires strong emission reductions and large scale application of technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This motivates me for my research that focusses on the application of two Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies on agricultural soils, namely enhanced weathering and biochar. Enhanced weathering involves the spreading of crushed silicate rocks on large surfaces such as agricultural soils aimed at enhanced CO2 consumption. Biochar is produced by the pyrolysis of organic materials resulting in a soil amendment rich in stabile organic carbon. Enhanced weathering and biochar not only sequester carbon, but in combination may also suppress heavy metal mobility and promote nutrient availability, thereby stimulating crop productivity when applied to agricultural soils. I aim to experimentally study these potential co-benefits resulting from the combined application of enhanced weathering and biochar using laboratory experiments, greenhouse pot experiments and a lysimeter field experiment.