Please join the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative for a virtual seminar presented by Sindhu Jagadamma, Associate Professor, University of Tennessee.

The title of her talk is "Deep soil carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change."

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Abstract: Soils contain the largest stock of organic carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems, and this massive pool of C is quite vulnerable to climatic changes and other environmental perturbations. Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration offers multiple benefits, including soil-air-water quality, crop productivity, and climate change mitigation. Aspirational agricultural practices such as reduced tillage, crop rotations, and growing winter cover crops greatly increase SOC accumulation in agroecosystems. However, in croplands under warm and humid climatic conditions, such as those in the southeast US, it is challenging to achieve net SOC storage as the environmental conditions favor SOC decomposition over accumulation. One way to enhance the stability of SOC in such environments is to promote its accumulation in the subsoil. This talk will provide an overview of climate-smart agricultural strategies for SOC storage and some promising options to achieve subsoil SOC sequestration.

Bio: Sindhu Jagadamma is an Associate Professor of Soil Science in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She received her BS degree in Agricultural Sciences from India, and MS and Ph.D. degrees in Soil Science from the Ohio State University. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division before joining the University of Tennessee in 2016. Her research focuses on addressing the grand challenge of prudent soil and nutrient management without compromising agricultural productivity. This is a core challenge to achieve future world food security as well as sustainability in the changing climate. She has published 75 research articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is the recipient of Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities in 2016 and Gamma Sigma Delta Tennessee Chapter Research Award in 2022.