Quantifying soil carbon measurement for agricultural soils management: 11 white papers

• Regardless of what approach is pursued, reliable and cost effective quantification methods are critical to designing and implementing improved management of soil organic matter including soil organic carbon, and C sequestration policies in the land use sector.

Together the group, including Point Blue, produced a set of 11 white papers related to soil organic carbon quantification– see here and below.

Quantifying soil carbon measurement for agricultural soils management: A consensus view from science

Building a 21st-century soil information platform for US and world soils

Soil Carbon Accounting – the Australian example

Integrating soil carbon stocks across point to continental scales

How do we get the most out of soil data? The opportunities and challenges of developing open soil data

Measurement of Soil Carbon Stocks

Meeting local/state/national/international climate change mitigation goals

Case Study of Soil C Quantification: Alberta GHG Offset System

EPIC model based search of agronomic strategies for increasing SOC

Gridded agroecosystem and SOC modeling with EPIC model

Land Management

Take Home messages from Quantifying soil carbon measurement for agricultural soils management:

• There is heightened interest in increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks to improve

performance of working soils especially under drought or other stressors, to increase

agricultural resilience, fertility and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

• There are many improved management practices that can be and are currently being

applied to cropland and grazing lands to increase SOC.

• Farmers and ranchers are decisionmakers who operate in larger contexts that often

determine or at least bound their agricultural and financial decisions (e.g., crop insurance, input subsidies, etc.). Any effort to value improvements in the performance of agricultural soils through enhanced levels of SOC will require feasible, credible and

creditable assessment of SOC stocks, which are governed by dynamic and complex soil

processes and properties.

• This paper provides expert consensus evaluation of currently accepted methods of

quantifying SOC that could provide the basis for a modern soil information system.