Tag: enhanced rock weathering

Peer-reviewed Publications

Tu et al. (2026): Scaling up enhanced rock weathering for equitable climate change mitigation

Ying Tu, Radine Rafols, Yangyang Xu, Natalia Butler, Linah Ababneh, Feng Tao, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Benjamin Z. Houlton & Chuan Liao, IN: Communications Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44458-026-00034-w

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is an emerging approach to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while improving soil health and crop productivity. Yet its long-term climate impact remains uncertain due to limited understanding of how adoption will evolve across regions, income groups, and in response to a warming world. Here, the authors combine historical analogs of technological diffusion with a coupled human–nature feedback model to provide spatially explicit projections of global ERW adoption through 2100. They develop five scenarios reflecting varying levels of policy ambition, societal responsiveness, and implementation capacity.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Tu et al. (2026): Scaling up enhanced rock weathering for equitable climate change mitigation

Ying Tu, Radine Rafols, Yangyang Xu, Natalia Butler, Linah Ababneh, Feng Tao, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Benjamin Z. Houlton and Chuan Liao, IN: Communications Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44458-026-00034-w

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is an emerging approach to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while improving soil health and crop productivity. Yet its long-term climate impact remains uncertain due to limited understanding of how adoption will evolve across regions, income groups, and in response to a warming world. Here, the authors combine historical analogs of technological diffusion with a coupled human–nature feedback model to provide spatially explicit projections of global ERW adoption through 2100.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Taylor et al. (2026): ARTEMIS version 1.0: A Reactive Transport Enhanced Rock Weathering Model with Coupled Soil Carbon and Nutrient Dynamics – Preprint

Lyla L. Taylor, Rachael H. James, Ilsa Kantola and David J. Beerling, IN: EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5823

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is increasingly considered to be a promising carbon dioxide reduction (CDR) strategy, but carbon removal can be is difficult to verify with field measurements. Reactive transport models (RTMs) have the potential to shed light on the soil dynamics affecting CDR, and to quantify the timescales involved. Here, the authors present a new 1-D RTM representing all major processes affecting the chemistry of soils. These processes include nitrogen cycling kinetics, sorption and the choice of open or closed systems with respect to gas diffusion. They demonstrate this model’s utility with a detailed investigation examining the impact of those key ERW and soil processes on CDR and topsoil pH at a site in the United States Corn Belt.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Maxbauer et al. (2026): Evidence for carbon dioxide removal via enhanced rock weathering with steel slag, though not basalt, in a midwestern U.S. field trial

Daniel P. Maxbauer, Ella Milliken, Jahmaine Renzo Yambing, Emma Watson, Rachel B. Gregg, Liza Swanson, Jaeeun Sohng, Noah W. Sokol and Noah J. Planavsky, IN: Frontiers in Climate, https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2025.1657058

Enhanced weathering is an emergent pathway for permanent atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR). However, despite a dramatic increase in academic and commercial research, there remain relatively few published examples of field evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of enhanced weathering. Here, the authors present results from a three-year field trial that evaluated steel slag and crushed basalt applied as amendments in a conventional agricultural system in the Midwestern United States. Steel slag applied to initially acidic soil increased porewater pH and alkalinity and increased soil pH and Ca-saturation. Together, changes in porewater chemistry and soil properties provide strong evidence for steel slag weathering and CDR. However, steel slag applied to soils with a neutral initial pH did not generate significant changes in soil or porewater chemistry. In addition, coarse-grained crushed basalt did not generate significant change in any of the soils. Strong acid effects were apparent in all 3 years of monitoring soil porewater chemistry.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Bijma et al. (2026): Reviews and syntheses: Carbon vs. cation based MRV of Enhanced Rock Weathering and the issue of soil organic carbon

Jelle Bijma, Mathilde Hagens, Jens S. Hammes, Noah Planavsky, Philip A. E. Pogge von Strandmann, Tom Reershemius, Christopher T. Reinhard, Phil Renforth, Tim J. Suhrhoff, Sara Vicca, Arthur Vienne and Dieter Wolf-Gladrow, IN: Biogeosciences, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-53-2026

They discuss the “monitoring, reporting and verification” (MRV) strategy of Enhanced Weathering (EW) based on carbon accounting and argue that in open systems such as arable land, this approach is ill-suited to close the balance of all carbon fluxes. They argue for total alkalinity (TA) as the central parameter for the carbon based MRV of EW. However, they also stress that tracking alkalinity fluxes using a systems-level approach is best done by focusing on charge balance maintenance through time.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Xu et al. (2025): Microbial-driven iron transformation and carbon stabilisation in flooded soils: roles of biochar and rock weathering

Qiao Xu, Gefeng Zhang, Feifan Zhang, Tharanga Bandara, Hongyan Guo, Meiling Xu and Caixian Tang, IN: Plant and Soil, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-025-08168-x

The escalating climate crisis demands innovative carbon dioxide removal strategies, with biochar and enhanced rock weathering (ERW) emerging as promising carbon-negative solutions. However, their contrasting effects on iron (Fe) (hydr)oxide–organic carbon (OC) interactions, a key mechanism underlying mineral-mediated C persistence, remain poorly understood.

A pot experiment examined the effects of biochar and enhanced basalt weathering alone and in combination on Fe oxide phases, C-binding capacity, Fe-complexed OC characteristics, and shifts in Fe-oxidising and reducing microbial communities via 16S rRNA sequencing in a paddy soil.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Mayer et al. (2025): Carrying capacity as constraint for maximum efficient CDR in agricultural soils

K. Ulrich Mayer, Sergio A. Bea, Danyang Su, Jennifer Soong, Jenny Mills and Shawn G. Benner, IN: Research Square, https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7811095/v1

Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), in which crushed basaltic rocks are spread on croplands, has emerged as a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approach to mitigate climate change impacts. Important known constraints on weathering rates include temperature, humidity, and feedstock grain size. However, the quantitative prediction and optimization of CDR is currently limited by uncertainty in the processes and rates governing weathering and export. Here, the authors propose to evaluate the product of effective groundwater recharge and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) concentrations as a measure of CDR.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Zhang et al. (2025): An Integrated Modelling Framework to Determine Terrestrial Carbon Dioxide Removal via Enhanced Rock Weathering

Ziyan Zhang, Gregory Jones, Salvatore Calabrese, Matteo Bertagni, Simone Fatichi, Bonnie Waring, Athanasios Paschalis, IN: Global Change Biology, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70650

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is an emerging carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy that can support net-zero emission targets. However, current ERW modelling efforts rely on assumptions that introduce substantial variation in CDR estimates across varying ecosystems and hydroclimatic conditions. They typically ignore or oversimplify plant–soil interactions and high-frequency hydrological dynamics, obscuring short-term weathering responses and biotic feedbacks to soil moisture dynamics. Here, the authors introduce an integrated, process-based modelling framework, T&C-SMEW, which represents ecohydrological and ERW dynamics, along with microbially explicit biogeochemical processes. They compared framework simulations against a controlled mesocosm experiment and long-term field observations, demonstrating its ability to reproduce feedstock cation release, soil pH dynamics, gross primary production, and CO₂ fluxes.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Sun et al. (2025): Multiple Lines of Evidence Reveal Rapid, Seasonal Watershed Responses to Enhanced Weathering

Fengchao Sun, Robert Rioux, Tim Suhrhoff, Wyatt Tatge, Boriana Kalderon-Asael, Quinn Zacharias, William Miller-Brown, Aaron MacDonald, Esmeralda Garcia, Jamie Shanley, Peter Raymond, Noah Planavsky and James Saiers, IN: ResearchSquare, https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8224816/v1

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a natural carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approach that captures CO₂ by accelerating silicate weathering using crushed rocks. A major question on the efficacy of ERW is how fast and efficient it is at transporting the products of weathering to drainage networks, and ultimately the ocean. Using a novel whole watershed experiment, the authors report multiple lines of evidence of rapid and pronounced streamwater chemistry responses within weeks of basalt application (20 t ha⁻¹) to 15% of a 59-ha temperate, headwater catchment.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

León et al. (2025): Plant and Soil Responses to Concrete and Basalt Amendments Under Elevated CO₂: Implications for Plant Growth, Enhanced Weathering and Carbon Sequestration

Haridian del Pilar León, Sara Martinez, María del Mar Delgado, José L. Gabriel, Sergio Alvarez, IN: Agriculture (MDPI), https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15232435

The rise in greenhouse gases underscores the urgency of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) as a complement to emission reductions. Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) holds promise by coupling geochemical carbon sequestration with agronomic benefits, although integrative experimental evidence remains limited. This study evaluated two amendments (recycled concrete in wheat, C₃, and basalt in maize, C₄) under ambient and elevated CO₂ conditions (~1000 ppm).

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