A total of $8 million is being invested as a means of bolstering carbon monitoring efforts on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Four partner organizations will be working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to expand the overall effort. The four partners will be working on regional projects to measure and monitor carbon in the soil of working agricultural lands. Practices will be assessed to better understand how climate-smart practices are impacting carbon sequestration.
“Healthy soils are a powerful tool when it comes to sequestering carbon. These partners will enhance our measurement tools and eventually become part of our program delivery to advance quantification of the effects that climate-smart agricultural practices have on carbon sequestration,” NRCS Chief Terry Cosby said in a press release. “Soil health management practices and activities are a tremendous part of our strategy when it comes to climate-smart agriculture and forestry.”
American Climate Partners, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, and the University of Texas at El Paso will be supporting the implementation of the new Conservation Evaluation and Monitoring Activity (CEMA) initiative as part of the investment. Partner groups will serve an important role in providing sample collection training and informing producers about CEMA opportunities. The measuring and monitoring of soil carbon will support the ongoing efforts to better assess climate outcomes of a variety of USDA programs.
Iowa State University of Science and Technology will develop instructional initiatives surrounding NRCS’s Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) Stock Measurement standards. Michigan State University will design comprehensive training approaches for SOC evaluation, which will include field days, bulletins, and multimedia materials. The four-year project administered by American Climate Partners will incorporate several other organizations in the provision of technical assistance to historically underserved communities in the NRCS Southeast Region. The University of Texas at El Paso will also be supporting producers in carbon monitoring training through the facilitation of regional capacity-building.
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