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Here's how Bay Area Researchers are Using Plants to Fight Climate Change

Jul 26, 2021 at 1:20pm

Dan Ashley & Tim Didion

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- As greenhouse gasses continue to pour into our atmosphere, researchers have struggled for solutions to harness dangerous pollutants like CO2. However, in a nursery at the University of California, Dr. Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Ph.D., and her colleagues are gathering evidence for a solution that could be right under our feet.

"What you're looking at here is the roots from the switchgrass and surrounding plants," she explains, showing off the long, dangling, brown roots.

Pett-Ridge splits time between Berkeley, and the Lawrence Livermore Lab, searching for ways to sequester pollutants like CO2 underground, with the use of specific plants. In this case switchgrass.

"It's root system can apocryphally go down 50 feet. We've measured it to 12 to 15, and I got sick of digging at that point," said Dr. Pett-Ridge.

And deep is good. Especially if you understand that plants, including switchgrass, process the carbon that's in CO2 as part of photosynthesis, essentially pushing it down through their root system, where it interacts with nutrients in the ground. At depths of several feet, researchers say the CO2 is essentially sequestered from the atmosphere.

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