Methodology for Soil Organic Carbon Estimation in Regenerative Cropping and Managed Grassland Ecosystems

Summary

This methodology protocol proposes the use of remotely sensed multispectral imagery and soil sample results to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to monitor changes in Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) stocks, within a project area, through time. The project area will be defined in the credit class document. The SOC change will be reported as CO2 equivalent. SOC is crucial to soil health, fertility and ecosystem services including food production, making its preservation and restoration essential. This methodology will concentrate on the assessment of SOC sequestration as a major soil health characteristic, consisting of:

1. SOC stocks.CO
2. 2 equivalents (CO2e)

Soil contains approximately 2344 Gt of organic carbon globally and is the largest terrestrial pool of organic carbon (Stockmann et al., 2013). Small changes in the soil organic carbon stock could result in significant impacts on the atmospheric carbon concentration. By monitoring the carbon levels in the soil, farmers and landowners will be able to measure the impact of their stewardship.