Anaerobic digestion makes use of nutrients in manure and food waste, turning what could have ended up in a landfill into biogas that can provide electricity, natural gas, or even power for homes in nearby towns.
Enteric methane is potent, short-lived, and a major target for reductions to improve the sustainability of livestock production.
Methane is a product of enteric fermentation in a ruminant animal's gut. Read on to find out why it's important, and ways we can reduce enteric methane to improve livestock production.
Introducing livestock in a cropping system creates more ways for carbon to flow and transform. Read on for a better understanding of just how livestock change soil carbon.
Not directly--you're still going to need field samples. But there are some ways that remote sensing can help with monitoring. Read on to find out how.
Lawns are everywhere--I bet you have one! Turfgrass, like all other plants, requires nutrients. And nitrogen fertilizers, lawn mowing, and other maintenance tasks can give off powerful greenhouse gases. Read on to learn how to cut greenhouse gas emissions from turfgrass systems.
Plant breeders have made incredible improvements to crops, from improving yield to boosting resilience and increasing pest resistance. But can plant breeding improve soil carbon storage?
From driving a car to buying groceries, many parts of our daily lives make up our carbon footprint. And the scope gets even bigger when you consider the carbon footprint of a whole organization.
Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas with 300 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. How do we measure it in the field, and what can we do to cut emissions?
Changing management practices can help sequester carbon in the soil and improve overall soil health. But how deep does that organic carbon go?
The "gold standard" of soil sampling is getting physical samples from multiple spots throughout the field. But all that could be changing--watch Steven Hall explain why.
Adverse weather and extreme climatic events can hinder storage or even release large amounts of soil carbon.
Total soil carbon includes both organic and inorganic carbon. Soil organic carbon includes the once-living matter from plants, dead leaves, roots, and soil microbes, while inorganic carbon is mineral-based and much less responsive to management.
Owned, direct, indirect, energy, supply chains--what in the world counts as an emission for each scope?
Measuring, reporting, and verifying soil carbon requires accurate collection of soil data, reporting in standardized units, and third-party checks.
After adding additional plant matter to the soil, the biggest driver of storing soil organic carbon is the activity of microorganisms like bacteria and fungi, followed by soil texture.
Interested in finding out how much carbon is in your soil? One of the first things to tackle is taking manual soil cores.
Collect samples to measure organic carbon concentration, bulk density, and coarse fragments. Together, these three measures can help you accurately calculate soil carbon stock in your fields.
Calculating soil organic carbon stock requires measures of soil organic carbon concentration of the soil, bulk density, and coarse fragment content.
A “carbon pool” is any part of the climate system with the capacity to store, accumulate, or release carbon, according to the European Union. The soil carbon pool includes all the carbon in the soil, but the size of the soil carbon pool can be changed depending on management.
Carbon markets rely on accurate measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of soil carbon to issue carbon credits. But tallying soil carbon can be tricky. How should we go about sampling soil for MRV? And what does it tell us?
Agriculture is often cited as a primary source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but crop production and land use account for just over 13% of food-related GHG emissions globally. Altogether, food production in every stage accounts for 26% of global GHG emissions.
Agricultural soils hold great potential for sequestering carbon and improving soil health in the process. But how do you measure soil carbon?
The soil’s potential carbon capacity depends on soil type, climate, and management practices. No two soils will sequester carbon at the same rate or in exactly the same amount—different producers need to implement different practices depending on their land.
Increased soil water storage, improved biological activity, better soil aggregation, improved yield--these are just a few of the benefits of increasing agricultural soil carbon.
Carbon cycles through agricultural systems through plant photosynthesis, biomass decomposition, and animal production, with opportunities to improve carbon sequestration at each point in the cycle.
Management practices either improve or set back soil carbon sequestration, beginning with the soil and moving through crop production.
Sinking carbon into soil is a powerful tool in our toolbox to decrease or offset carbon emissions. But how does carbon get into the soil? And once it's there, how do we keep it there?
All aspects of crop production that involve keeping the soil covered, minimizing disturbance, and agronomic management can help sequester carbon and reduce emissions.
Compared to other sectors globally, food production (including retail, transport, processing, farming, and land use) accounts for 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions as of 2019.
Soil management is responsible for over half the greenhouse gas emissions generated by agriculture in the United States. Enteric fermentation—or gases created by livestock digesting their food—account for another 27%, and manure management another 14%.