OSU combats global warming

An invitation to an Ohio State professor by the President of Iceland led to an international conference on land restoration, and a collaboration to combat climate change that could possibly have a global impact.

As part of a lecture series, Iceland's President Ólafur Grímsson invited Rattan Lal, professor of soil sciences at OSU and director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, to speak about the benefits of land restoration which mitigates global warming. Lal said that more than one-third of Iceland is barren and uninhabitable because of severe soil erosion and land degradation. When the Vikings arrived over a millennium ago, they cut down all the trees and brought sheep to graze on the grasses. This led to erosion of the soil by water and wind that now is reduced by more than three feet in some areas. With so little soil and such harsh conditions, thus vegetation will not grow.

"This is a very serious issue for such a small country - only 300,000 people," Lal said. "The degradation happened over 1200 years and will probably take several decades to start to repair."

Lal also said because everything must be shipped to the island nation, about the size of Texas, consumer goods often cost four or five times what the same item would cost in America.

"Although Iceland is a very rich country, things are very expensive, gasoline was $6 a gallon during my visit," said Lal.

Lal said OSU has signed a memorandum of agreement to send and host exchange students, to provide sabbatical for faculties from the US and Iceland and to develop a pilot study program on land restoration.

OSU will also assist in organizing a conference that will include South Africa and the European Union to focus on improving the productivity of land, increase bio-diversity and the quality of water, and doing this on a global level alleviates global warming and climate changes.

"Our visit to Iceland opened up some very interesting and promising opportunities for OSU and Icelandic universities, especially in the areas of natural resources and matters of climate change," said Jerry Ladman, associate provost for International Affairs."We look forward to the development activities."

The OSU proposal covers each of the three framed conventions developed by the United Nations: climate change, desertification control and biodiversity, Lal said.

"When you restore land, you put carbon back into the soil, which will mitigate climate change, which helps the world as a whole," Lal said.

Lal said Iceland's goal is to become a model for the world. At present, the country emits approximately three million tons of carbon as carbon dioxide yearly and their goal is to return about the same amount back into the soil - essentially making Iceland a zero emissions country.

"The project onboard in eastern Iceland is trying to recreate areas as pristine as they were before the Vikings," said David Hansen, director international programs at OSU. "I was really impressed by the apparent commitment of the president and the people to try to make Iceland a model for the rest of the world."

Degraded land and decomposing trees emit carbon and tilling the land then releases the carbon leading to desertification, Lal said.

"The new Iceland agreement is based on a study for the U.S. funded by the USDA of the potential of U.S. cropland to sequester carbon and mitigate the greenhouse effect," Lal said. "No-till planting, invented in Ohio, is a way to plant crops without tilling the farmlands and releasing the carbon."

Sponsored by OSU and the Soil Conservation Services of Iceland, the conference, scheduled for the end of August 2007, will focus on global awareness of soil erosion and degradation and on carbon sequestration with Iceland as a model.

Although the conference will not be held until next year, OSU President Karen A. Holbrook has invited President Grímsson to visit the OSU campus when he visits Washington D.C. this September.

"It will not happen overnight, but if they can put this carbon into trees and into the soil, they will offset all of their emissions," Lal said. "In the U.S. we could put 300 million tons into the soil and 300 million tons into trees, which is one-third of what we burn as fossil fuel combustion. But it is all linked together, we would have to stop erosion and mining, plant trees, especially in New Mexico and Arizona and switch to no-till planting."