Can you carbon farm in a city?

Carbon Sponge is an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the potential for urban soils to sequester carbon as a means to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse gases and build healthy soil.

At microBIOMETER® we were very excited to work with Brooke Singer and play a role in this important project. Brooke initiated Carbon Sponge during her residency at the New York Hall of Science in 2018. Being introduced to the early version of microBIOMETER® (pictured here) was one of the factors that paved the way for Carbon Sponge. An excerpt from the guide, “Getting access to a tool that quickly, easily and cheaply measures microbial biomass in a soil sample, without needing a lab test, holds a lot of potential.”

Click here to order the Carbon Sponge Guide. All proceeds go to support the project.

Currently, Brooke along with her colleague Sara Perl Egendorf  are working with five New York City farms and gardens that are participating in Carbon Sponge’s pilot testing program using a collection of tools, including the microBIOMETER®, to track urban soil health over time and consider the readiness of the soil to sequester carbon. The affiliates (a few pictured below) are: Bronx River Foodway, GrowNYC Teaching Garden on Governor’s Island, Pioneer Works, Prospect Farm and Red Hook Farms.