Data platform for increasing soil carbon in Australian agricultural systems

Summary

This project aims to develop a higher-accuracy, lower-cost Clean Energy Regulator (CER) approved soil carbon (C) method, prototype soil C crediting method, and software for producers and carbon project developers to manage soil C projects.

Using flux towers, the project will calibrate soil data for Australian conditions and build a soil carbon data management platform. Australian red meat stakeholders will be able to use the data platform to predict how much soil carbon they can build by implementing various management practices (such as legumes, fertilisers, time-controlled grazing, and conversion from cropping to permanent pasture) and to manage soil carbon projects within the Australian carbon trading system.

Objectives

The objectives of this project include:

• Improve the accuracy of prediction of Australian carbon credit units (ACCU) for a soil C projects across a range of locations and management practices.
• Significantly reduce the ACCU discount as compared to the current CER soil carbon measurement method through the recognition of higher soil carbon quantification accuracy in a new method.
• Reduce the cost for registered soil carbon projects to use this new method and associated tools.
• Enable an annual ACCU recognition so that carbon project owners can achieve an annual payment for any ACCUs achieved.

Benefits to industry

The data platform will help producers by:

• reducing the costs of soil carbon baselining and follow up measurement
• providing a tool to predict and measure the value of soil carbon projects to reduce risk and increase returns
• increasing opportunities to derive revenue from environmental services and/or natural capital trading markets.

It will assist producers participate in CER by lowering the cost of ongoing soil testing, enabling soil carbon credits to be paid out annually, and enabling prediction of potential to increase soil carbon in response to changing practices.