What is the role of erosion in soil carbon sequestration?

In our first webinar of 2022, “Erosion,” Dr. Kristof Van Oost (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium) will share his research to quantify the impacts of erosion on C-cycling at the global scale. Dr. Ken Wacha (USDA-ARS National Soil Erosion Laboratory) will discuss how management and landscape processes in the US Corn Belt increase the spatial heterogeneity of soil carbon stocks and promote yield gaps.

Time: February 15th 2022, 3:00 PM Eastern.

Dr. Kristof Van Oost is Professor of Earth System Science at the Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth & Climate Research of the Université Catholique de Louvain. He is a foremost expert on the impacts of erosion on the global carbon cycle, and his research papers have been cited over 13,000 times. His interests are in geomorphology and soil science with a focus on agricultural erosion and the role of sediment transport in carbon and nutrient cycling across landscapes. He has carried out field research in ecosystems worldwide, including in Brazil, China, South-Africa, Europe and DR Congo. Dr. Van Oost has served as executive editor of SOIL journal since 2014 and previously served as an associate editor for the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

Dr. Ken Wacha is an Agricultural Engineer Research Scientist at the USDA-ARS National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory. His research focuses on aggregate to landscape erosion dynamics, with the pillar of his research focusing on landscape connectivity, rainfall and tillage induced erosion, and the redistribution of soil, carbon and water across agricultural landscapes. Dr. Wacha has been a researcher with the Intensively Managed Landscapes-Critical Zone Observatory (http://criticalzone.org/iml) for several years, in addition to working on a diverse collection of projects with the USDA-ARS.