Agrivoltaics: Solar and Agriculture Co-Location

What is RECSOIL?

RECSOIL is a mechanism for scaling up sustainable soil management (SSM) with a focus on increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) and improving overall soil health. The priorities are to:

Prevent future SOC losses and increase SOC stocks;
Improve farmers' incomes;
Contribute to food security

RECSOIL focuses on agricultural and degraded soils. The mechanism supports the provision of incentives for farmers who agree to implement good practices.

"Mitigating the effects of poor soil conditions once sediment has entered the drainage system and aquatic environment is difficult, expensive, and labor–intensive."

The implementation of proven Soil Organic Carbon (SOC)-centred Sustainable Soil Management (SSM) practices for maintaining carbon rich soils (peatlands, black soils, permafrost, etc.) and for sequestering more carbon in soils with such potential (croplands and degraded soils), would address the challenge of compensating global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Environmentalists

Environmentalists often describe trees as the "lungs" of the Earth because they facilitate air quality preservation.

Climate change is affecting forests on a global scale – from tree health, water supply, milder winters, soil erosion, native vegetation, invasive species and more.

These impacts are also expected to affect privately-owned forests in the Forest Service’s Eastern Region, where the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science is located.

The construction of dams, urbanization, changes in land use, and modifications to the channel network (such as channelization) can lead to significant changes in the shape of the land. These changes can result in adjustments in the width and depth of the channel, and the size of the sediment, and can even spread over long distances (up to hundreds of kilometers), according to Gregory (2006).

Erosion is the movement of rock fragments (sediments), soil, or dissolved matter (nutrients or pollutants) by wind, water, ice, or gravity.

Weathering

Weathering is the mechanical and chemical disintegration of rock on the surface of the Earth. Weathering produces sediments, erosion moves sediments. Weathered materials are subjected to gravitation forces pulling them downhill and are transported by forces of erosion associated with flowing water, ice, or wind.

Weathering produces sediments, erosion moves sediments:

Weathered materials are subjected to gravitation forces pulling them downhill and are transported by forces of erosion associated with flowing water, ice, or wind.
Weathering facilitates erosion, while the eventual deposition of these materials is called sedimentation.

Great Barrier Reef.

Tons of dredged sediment to be dumped on Great Barrier Reef under new plan.

SYDNEY—The government agency that oversees Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on Friday approved a plan to dump vast swathes of sediment on the reef as part of a major coal port expansion — a decision that environmentalists say will endanger one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems.

Politicians risk the future of the reef for the sake of progress.

On Friday, federal Environment Minister Mark Butler formally delayed making a decision on a deeply controversial proposal to dredge 3 million cubic meters of seafloor and dump it in Great Barrier Reef waters.

Great Barrier Reef dredging is demonized by activists.

Consistently ignored in most reactions to the federal approval of a modest dredging program at the Abbot Point coal terminal in north Queensland is a landmark raising of the environmental protection bar for the Great Barrier Reef.

Pollution in Hackensack River sediment affects the eating habits of crabs and fish.

Researchers have found that levels of mercury and PCBs in the Hackensack River’s sediment are so high that crabs and bluefish exhibit extremely odd behavior, making it hard for them to pursue potential prey by ambushing them.

Crabs living in the river are too sluggish to