Deep-rooted grass stores significantly more carbon, says new study

Soil biologist Eric Slessarev has some advice for conservationists, landscapers, and farmers with fallow fields: Go touch deep-rooted grass. Or better yet, go plant some. Slessarev, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is the first author of a new study in Earth's Future showing that deep-rooted grasses store significantly more carbon in their root biomass than shallow-rooted crops—without harming the existing organic material already in the ground.