Our Compost Climate Connections webinar series features the crucial role of compost to protect the climate.
Compost is an essential ingredient in carbon farming as it provides soil both organic matter and beneficial microbes. For the fifth webinar of the series, we are joined by Dan Matsch of Eco-Cycle and Mark Easter of Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL). In Boulder County, Colorado, Eco-Cycle and NREL have established carbon farming pilot projects to adapt the science used in the Marin Carbon Project in California for the Rocky Mountain climate. This webinar explored two of the pilot projects now underway in Boulder County and City of Boulder agricultural open space. In both projects, compost application is one of five treatments being measured. View the recording below!
This webinar is one in a series ILSR offers to advance composting. View our webinar resources here.
To learn more about ILSR’s Composting for Community Initiative, click here.
Speakers
Mark Easter
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
Mark Easter is a Senior Research Associate at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. His work focuses on greenhouse gas inventories and greenhouse gas decision support systems in agriculture and forestry. Mark contributed analysis to multiple United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on greenhouse gas inventory methods, and has contributed to national-level inventories of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry in the United States, Brazil, Kenya, Jordan, India, Spain and Italy. He is the project coordinator for the COMET-Farm project and technical lead for the Carbon Benefit Project, and collaborates on the COMET-Planner project.
Dan Matsch
Eco-Cycle
Dan Matsch directs the compost department for Eco-Cycle, a nonprofit recycler that works with cities along Colorado’s Front Range. He also directs Eco-Cycle’s Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM). Based in Boulder County, Eco-Cycle has helped to establish carbon farming pilot projects that adapt the science used in the Marin Carbon Project in California for the Rocky Mountain climate. Through its Community Carbon Farming project, it is attempting to measure carbon gains in soil using carbon farming practices on urban land, utilizing a group of citizen scientists. Dan is also an active member of the steering committee for the Community Composter Coalition, which ILSR convenes.
Header photo credit: Boulder Lifestyle.