This $742,643 federal Project Grant was awarded on September 1, 2024 by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310). The grant supports a research project by Appalachian State University to investigate how soil communities mediate the impacts of compost amendments on soil carbon storage in rangelands across California.
The key research activities include: 1) a spatial survey of soil community composition across 15 compost-amended rangeland sites, 2) a temporal survey to assess how soil communities shift with carbon pools over a compost amendment chronosequence, and 3) an expanded soil carbon model that accounts for microbial carbon pools and an experimental test of plant versus invertebrate inputs to soil carbon in amended versus non-amended soils. The project includes a sub-award to the University of California, Berkeley to conduct soil sampling, analysis, and carbon/nitrogen quantification at field sites. The goal is to contextualize the mechanisms and conditions under which compost amendments increase soil carbon storage to help stakeholders optimize rangeland soil health practices.
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