Back in week five of The Research Project I reported on pastureland research done by Professor Whendee Silver of the University of California – Berkley. Dr. Silver’s research showed that managed pasture lands or range lands were quite good at removing or sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. And since carbon in the atmosphere is the main cause of global warming Dr. Silver’s research claimed that properly managed pasture lands across the world could result in not just stopping global warming but reversing it.

As I was browsing through the research news entries at the University of Georgia web site I found that researchers there are doing the same kind of research on pasture lands and have come up with the same results:

“Emerging land uses, such as management-intensive grazing, may offer a rare win–win strategy combining profitable food production with rapid improvement of soil quality and short-term climate mitigation through soil carbon-accumulation.”

So I wondered if the researchers at the two universities were aware of what each other was doing. It appears that the folks at the University of Georgia were acquainted with the work of the California researchers. An article by Dr. Silver was listed among the references in the article published by the University of Georgia. Among the 30+ references in the University of Georgia article it appears there are quite a few places around the world, including New Zealand, that are doing this kind of research.

But after scanning through almost 20 pages of references in the California research paper on this topic I did not find a single reference to the work being done in Georgia. Maybe I just missed it.

With all this research going on about such an important topic I wonder why we haven’t heard anything about this in the news.

Here are the links to the articles about the University of Georgia research into pasture lands.

http://ugaresearch.uga.edu/research-news/capturing-carbon-on-the-farm/

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150430/ncomms7995/full/ncomms7995.html

And here is the link to what I wrote about this back in week five of The Research Project.

https://wordpress.com/post/30619769/1218/

And the stars of the show, a herd of Georgia Cows!