Giulia Bondi
Senior Research Officer, Teagasc
Giulia is a Senior Researcher at Teagasc, specializing in soil carbon sequestration and dynamics. She leads the Soil Deep Sampling Campaign of the Signpost Programme, focusing on carbon sequestration monitoring across various climates, soil types, and agricultural practices in Ireland.
Giulia has managed research activities and funds for national and European projects, including the EJP-Soil (European Union’s
Horizon 2020) project ICONICA. Over the years she has established an international network of collaborators and published extensively in top scientific journals. Currently, her research supports agricultural policies, and she actively disseminates her findings to multiple stakeholders.
Carbon sequestration – a question of scale
Introduction
Global warming is the long-term increase in the Earth’s temperature due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) . Although the capacity for CO2 to trap heat is less than that of nitrous oxide (N 2O) (global warming potential (GWP) of 265 over a 100 year timeframe relative to CO2) and methane (CH4) (GWP of 28 over 100 years or GWP of 86 over 20 years relative to CO2), the production of CO2 in the atmosphere is large.
Carbon Dioxide
In 2022, emissions of CO2 accounted for 60.6 % of the total national GHG emissions (excluding those from the Land-Use, Land use-Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector). CH4 and N2O accounted for 29.1 and 9.1 %, respectively (EPA, 2024). Carbon sequestration can
help to reduce global warming by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and in turn, offsetting the warming affect associated with high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Soil Carbon
Soil carbon is important because it plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change, enhancing soil fertility, and supporting overall ecosystem health. Globally, soils contain approximately 1417 Gt of carbon, which is more than two times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and about three times that stored in living plants. This makes soil the largest terrestrial carbon pool, highlighting its critical role in the global carbon cycle and its potential for sequestering
atmospheric CO2 (Lal, 2004). Grassland soils in Ireland store significant amounts of carbon, approximately 440 t CO₂/ha or an estimated 1,800 Mt CO₂ across all mineral soils (Paul et al., 2018). Managing soil carbon effectively can significantly reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations and improve agricultural productivity.
Read the full paper Carbon sequestration A question of scale (pdf)