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Doug McDaniel and Peter Donovan as Peter prepares to leave Lostine, Oregon on a cross-country soil carbon monitoring trip, July 21, 2011

The tour has begun, thanks to supporters and sponsors of the Soil Carbon Challenge! I've spent the last two months converting a used schoolbus into a mobile camper, and moving (and downsizing) into it. I will be on tour for the rest of 2011 in North America, doing baseline carbon plots and presentations/workshops about the carbon cycle, its importance to water, food security, and climate, and about the opportunity to turn atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter, which is fundamental to human civilization.

While we're on the subject of pyramids, Charley Orchard at Landekg.com has made a useful diagram of what makes monitoring valuable. Click the image to go to the May 2011 Land EKG newsletter explaining it.

So far, ten land managers have entered the Soil Carbon Challenge, an international and local competition to see how fast land managers can turn atmospheric carbon into water-holding, fertility-enhancing soil organic matter. What this means is that we've done baseline sampling on a few representative plots or microsites, and that this baseline sampling can be repeated with consistency at years 3, 6, and 10 to gauge the amount and rate of soil carbon change, and help to distinguish the effects of management from those of weather.

The current situation over much of the world is this: