Abstract
Anthropogenic soil acidification alters ecosystem functioning and triggers a decline in vegetation diversity, particularly in grasslands and heathlands. A solution for ecosystem recovery may be Enhanced Silicate (rock) Weathering (ESW), which was initially developed as a climate change mitigation technique. ESW consists of fine-grinding of silicate rocks, and then applying the powder to soils. During subsequent weathering, CO2 reacts with the mineral surfaces and is captured from the atmosphere, while HCO3- and base cations (e.g. K+) are released into the soil where they counter acidification. Although this procedure may remedy two urgent but also disparate problems, rising CO2 levels and biodiversity loss, effects of ESW have barely been explored in an ecosystem restoration context. The lack of holistic and long-term empirical data has resulted in an outlook of ESW that may be too optimistic, and potentially adverse effects of ESW have been disregarded. For example, we have no knowledge of how ESW and subsequent base cation regeneration affects community assembly of plants and microbes, nor do we understand how ESW interacts with soil organic matter (SOM) or with biotic actors, or how these interactions affect the ecosystem carbon (C) balance. In this project, I will fill in key knowledge gaps by combining three complementary approaches: (i) a synthesis of existing long-term field trials on ESW, (ii) a novel field experiment, and (iii) a full-factorial mesocosm experiment.
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