At an April 15 meeting of the Bilateral Working Group on Climate Change, in Ottawa, Canada, representatives from the United States and Canada agreed to expand and intensify their cooperative efforts in the development of integrated carbon cycle research. The efforts are toward building a coordinated North American Carbon Program. The working group was established by the United States and Canadian governments.

At the meeting, Charles W. Rice, professor of soil microbiology at K-State and director of the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, made a presentation with Carlos Monreal of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada about developing reliable methods to estimate soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gases in U.S. and Canadian agroecosystems.

Research at K-State and other universities has shown that successful implementation of soil carbon sequestration strategies can lower the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and help improve valuable cropland.

K-State also is the lead institution in the Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, which seeks to mitigate greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through carbon sequestration strategies. The federally-supported consortium is comprised of expert scientists from K-State, Colorado State University, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, Montana State University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Texas A&M University System, University of Nebraska and Battelle-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in conjunction with research groups within the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service and Natural Resource Conservation Service.

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Contact: Charles Rice
cwrice@k-state.edu
785-532-7217
Kansas State University
27-Apr-2004