Wendy Thienes
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Shaunavon Standard
If one digs a bit deeper into which businesses are located on Centre Street in Shaunavon, they will discover the Soil Carbon Laboratory, owned and operated by Ann-Lise Norman.
Norman and her partner, James Horne, moved to Shaunavon from Calgary in July 2021.
“I grew up on a ranch at the edge of Calgary, but I have family south of Swift Current and friends in the Shaunavon area,” Norman says. “I first visited here in my teens and saw that this was not the flatland that everyone said it was. I’ve always considered it as a location for retiring.” She is an avid gardener and visual artist, painting plein air landscapes, mostly in oils.
She is also a Professor Emerita at the University of Calgary and her independent soil carbon lab is a new venture since moving to Shaunavon. Norman taught upper-level physics and undergraduate environmental science at the University of Calgary, which tied into her own research interests, integrating the different sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics.
“Physics is a training in understanding something and allowing you to model what is going on,” she says. “It’s a way of thinking. I love it because it allows you to figure things out rather than memorizing. But, when you apply science to a real-world problem, if you are sitting in just one silo, you’re not being cutting edge. I also really loved chemistry and the work that I was doing at the university was an integration of chemistry and physics. My work focuses on understanding isotopes and how that tells us what is going on in the environment. Environmental physics involves atmospheric science, and you can also do soil physics. Physics in the soil is very complex.”
Her PhD focused on understanding the turnover of organic compounds which she was able to study within the Black Forest soils in Germany.
When the couple moved to Shaunavon she wanted to start a laboratory that would serve the purpose of her own continued research while helping people in this region understand the soil through local measurements and talk with them about what that means. Norman can also perform water measurements. Some older homes in Shaunavon still have their own wells and they need quality testing. Her laboratory can provide that testing rather than sending it off to a lab.
“I can do simple chemistry of their water. Has it changed as we have drought and remove water from the water table? Is there something changing that could be tracked for health & safety? Are contaminants affecting water quality? It’s easy to do dugout measurements to measure salinity which can be high when you have drought and can be harmful to livestock.”
Creating soil carbon is the largest driver behind her work.
“We’ve used the carbon over the years since the first settlers arrived,” she explains. “We have been harvesting the carbon in the soil as forage and crops and turning it over, through tilling, which has depleted the carbon. It can be replenished but you must pay close attention to what the soil characteristics are. I provide measurements that can be compared year over year. For example, if you are doing some changes on your garden, your 40 acres or your two sections, you can establish a baseline and then apply an alternative practice like intercropping (multiple species in close proximity), and you can tell if that’s improving the soil, what the carbon content is and whether there is live carbon in the soil.”
She adds, “You must create a bacterial and fungal community that is thriving and healthy and then you can regenerate the carbon organically. Live carbon (e.g. animal manure) can stimulate the soil. You can measure changes through soil management practices and find out how it’s doing. Various methods can provide extra nitrogen and nutrients when the soil contains a biodiverse soil environment. You can compare practices in terms of long-term soil health. Measurements might make sense each spring or over longer intervals.”
Soil health and soil carbon measurements that are beyond traditional measurements can help producers explore new avenues. Norman says, “You can understand how much of that carbon is going back into the atmosphere and how much is taken out and taken further down into the soil profile and made into inorganic carbon which is long term storage of carbon. If you improve your soil by doing these regenerative processes, you can benefit by having a better soil structure that holds water for longer; the root zone can go deeper. You are then capable of withstanding drought or other conditions better.
More resilience under stressful conditions means your crop will be better. If you look after your soil, you can improve your crops.”
Producers are exploring this and considering what is going on in the soil. She explains, “One of the drivers is that if you have applied conventional fertilizer year after year, you may find the soil begins to acidify and once that happens it becomes difficult to regenerate that soil without huge expense. It maybe hasn’t been necessary and hasn’t hit the radar here but there are large tracts of land in other regions where acidification is happening, so they are starting to think about regeneration of the soil.”
Norman notes that soil in this area is alkaline and clay and can vary within short distances. There are nice loamy soils by riverbeds near a flood plain, and gardens in town also tend to have good soil.
Her role includes advising how and where to collect soil samples for analysis. In addition to soil, carbon and water analysis for individual producers, Norman also provides soil management consulting for private business. Visit sclaboratory.ca or call 825-994-4542 for further information.
