Thanks to capital funding provided by SYMCA, SYSC has set-up a state-of-the-art soil carbon facility that will be used to better understand the health of South Yorkshire’s soils.
This new facility will allow SYSC to deliver an expanded project that looks at how land management practices affect soil health. The facility will also be used to support other regional nature recovery projects, and is already being used to conduct soil health baselines for the Shirebrook Valley Species Survival Project. We hope that this investment will unlock data and insights that will be of great benefit to our partners as they implement nature recovery and water management initiatives within the region such as the delivery of the Local Nature Recovery Strategy from 2025.
“It’s very exciting to be able to set up our new Soil Carbon Facility. Up until now there has not been a dedicated facility able to characterise the quantities and forms of soil carbon in the UK. This facility will allow us to do precisely that.”
Jill Edmondson, Food Systems & Environmental Restoration Lead
The novelty of this research is the range of measurements that this equipment can analyse; particulate organic carbon (POC), mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) , dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and black carbon. This is critical if we are to truly understand the complex processes that determine how much organic carbon is stored in soils, how it is stored, and how long it is held within soils under different conditions. Moreover, whilst we know that black carbon can be present at particularly high concentrations in soils from urban and industrial areas (Edmondson et al., 2015) such as the Dearne Valley, we don’t fully understand how it influences biogeochemical processes, including soil organic carbon turnover (Crispo et al., 2021; Edmondson et al., 2015).
The establishment of the new Soil Carbon Facility will underpin current research in our Food Systems & Environmental Restoration theme and beyond. Its state-of-the-art nature will enable a deeper understanding of the world beneath our feet. Our bioscientists are excited to get testing samples from across the region to paint a new picture of South Yorkshire’s soil carbon stocks.
