Carbon Sequestration via Prairie Restoration at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
Project Summary
We will quantify soil carbon dynamics at Midewin according to land use history and restoration practices. We will determine the magnitude and sustainability of carbon sinks via ecosystem restoration.
Conservation Need
Global climate change is now widely accepted to be related to human-caused increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). Offsets to these atmospheric inputs are critical to counter global climate change. Prairie restoration of agricultural lands may provide significant below ground carbon accrual and sequestration.
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is the largest prairie restoration east of the Mississippi River. At Midewin, many land management units were managed with row-crop agriculture by both the US Army and by the USDA Forest Service. Following the transfer of the lands from the Department of Defense to the Department of Agriculture, some of those management units will be restored to native prairie and grassland bird habitat. Midewin also includes cattle pasture (old field), remnant dolomite prairie, and remnant black soil prairie.
Midewin thus constitutes an ideal site to determine baseline soil carbon (and other nutrient) dynamics and the potential for restoration to effect significant carbon sequestration. Here we propose to tie a comprehensive soil sampling program to determine seed bank characteristics with respect to current and past land uses (funded by IDNR C2000 grant to B. Molano-Flores and C. J. Whelan) to complementary sampling and analysis of additional soil cores to document baseline carbon levels in soils at Midewin.
Our results will elucidate carbon dynamics in relation to restoration and determine the long-range potential for prairie restoration as an ecosystem carbon sink. Our design also provides essential baseline data for the proposed Grand Restoration Experiment (GRE), a partnership among USFS Midewin, the Illinois Natural History Survey, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Objectives
1) Determine existing and saturation levels of carbon in soils at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie according to historical and current land uses.
2) Determine existing and saturation levels of carbon in soils at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in relation to topography, elevation, and average soil moisture.
3) Determine the rate of soil carbon sequestration following restoration of native tallgrass prairie vegetation and establishment of grassland bird habitat. To meet this objective, we will need to resample in subsequent years. Hence, all spatial coordinates of soil core sampling sites will be recorded with GPS instruments. We propose to resample three years after the initial samples are collected.
4) Develop an archive of soil samples representing existing land uses; soil types; elevation gradients. This archive will be available for future research needs for comparative purposes.
Christopher J. Whelan and Brenda Molano-Flores
Illinois Natural History SurveyMiquel Gonzalez-Meler
University of Illinois at ChicagoSponsored by
USDA Forest Service Midewin National Tallgrass PraireNational Fish and Wildlife Foundation
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