Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) is a nature-based strategy for removing CO₂ by spreading crushed silicate rock on soils. As part of the UC Davis California Collaborative for Climate Change Solutions, we test ERW at two field-scale sites in California (cropland and irrigated pasture), evaluating both its potential for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and its impacts on soil health and crop yield.

My role focuses on the geochemical side: tracing inorganic carbon and mineral transformations using high-resolution elemental and isotopic analyses (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, δ⁸⁸Sr, δ⁷Li). By linking in-soil reactions with solute export from paired amended and control plots, I help build a mechanistic framework that integrates biological activity, geochemical reactions, and soil processes to verify ERW-driven carbon removal and asses its co-benefits in working landscapes.

This project investigates how microbes influence, and respond to, the transformation of rock into soil. In a deglaciated alpine basin of the eastern Sierra Nevada, we combined cosmogenic ¹⁰Be dating with DNA sequencing to track microbial communities across bare rock, saprolite, and soil. We discovered that microbial communities follow two different trajectories: soils host diverse, evolving communities linked to weathering and soil formation, while bare rocks preserve low-diversity communities with little change over ~13,000 years. These findings reveal early feedbacks between life and landscapes, showing how microorganisms help shape Earth’s surface over time.

[Manuscript undre review at PNAS]

Using cosmogenic nuclide data from four large rivers (Amazon, Branco, Colorado, and Po) we constructed a stochastic model that simulated transport dynamics in large-scale fluvial systems. Constrained by cosmogenic nuclide data our model quantifies residence times in large rivers to range between tens to hundreds of thousands of years (104-105 yr). 

[Ben-Israel et al., 2022; JGR-Earth Surface]

I tested how we can use stable cosmogenic 21Ne in the deep geological past (107-108  years). I figured out this is quite challenging and you need to account for post-burial production (muons), non-cosmogenic 21Ne procured in the quartz grain (nucleogenic Ne), and loss of Ne from diffusion (oh my!).

[Ben-Israel et al., 2020; EPSL] 

Using cosmogenic 21Ne we examined how long has quartz sand been exposed at the surface throughout the sedimentary cycle and concluded that sand grains spend most of their time buried and only a brief time at the surface.