On the 22nd of November, ARC Zero Chairman was given the privilege to present just some of the work that ARC Zero has been doing to explore the consequence of different long term land uses of soil health, at Mission Soil Week, in Madrid as part of the Spanish EU Presidency.
John explained how, with the help of Wageningen University & Research’s Masters Student, Ricardo Buffara, soils under five different land uses, 250 year old oak tree plantations; 30 year old oak tree plantations; 120 year old silvo pasture; 200 year old grazing permanent grass and 30 year old short rotation willow bioenergy crops; were compared, looking at differences in soil organic carbon; the depths ate which carbon was laid down in the soil; the respiration rate of the soil; the levels of fungi and the numbers of earthworms.
This work was carried out on one of the seven ARC Zero farms, Brook Hall Estate.
Key differences were observed, with two key observations
The wider the plant diversity is growing in a soil, the more complex the plant root architecture is, the more soil organic carbon there is, appearing the whole way down through the soil profile to the C Horizon
Land uses that had big ruminant animal faeces defecated on it, had better soil biology, with soil respiration, soil fungi and earth worm counts all showing considerable improvement
John would like to thank the EU Soil Mission Board for affording him the opportunity to share with the wider EU Soil Community the findings that had been found through the work of ARC Zero
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